Knowledge Sharing Attitude: An Empirical Test of a Multifactor Model

Knowledge sharing (KS) attitude is a psychological variable that affects individuals' decisions to share or hoard their knowledge. While attitude theory describes attitude as a multi-component construct, past research has overlooked the multidimensional structure of the attitude construct in KS contexts. Accordingly, this study focusses on KS attitude as a concept with cognitive, affective, and behavioural components. Data were collected from 89 participants involved in systems development projects to empirically test the expanded structure of KS attitude. The results provide strong support for the tertiary structure of KS attitude and demonstrate three conceptually and empirically distinguishable components of KS attitudinal. The results also show that the cognitive and affective components of KS attitude have significant effects on behavioural attitude to share knowledge. Several practical and research implications can be drawn from the results of this study.