Sharing my knowledge? An interactional perspective

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify factors that facilitate individual knowledge sharing. Specifically, the authors investigated the roles of coworker support and individual characteristics, i.e., exchange ideology and learning orientation on knowledge sharing. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from questionnaires distributed to employees and their direct supervisors in two companies in South Korea. Hierarchical regression analyses and simple slope test were performed to test the hypotheses. Findings – Coworker support and learning orientation is positively but exchange ideology is negatively related to knowledge sharing. Furthermore, when coworker support is low, knowledge sharing is mainly dependent on each individual’s characteristics. However, when coworker support is high, employees showed high level of knowledge sharing irrespective of their individual characteristics. Research limitations/implications – This study suggested that the support from coworker as well as individuals’ characteristics plays an important role in determining their knowledge sharing behaviors. Moreover, the authors found the significant interaction effects of coworker support and individual characteristics on knowledge sharing, drawing on insights from trait activation theory. Practical implications – For organizations to encourage individual knowledge sharing behaviors, they may need to maintain the work environment that encourages the peer workers to support each other. Originality/value – Although many actions have been adopted to foster knowledge management in organizations, employees may still be reluctant to share their knowledge. This paper highlights not only the main effects of coworker support and individual differences but also the interaction effect between them in facilitating knowledge sharing.