Why share knowledge? Developing a model for knowledge transfer and the role of motivation

• Main Authors: Yu-Chun Lin, 林育群
• Other Authors: Chia-ping Yu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/84720040005443173776

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 資訊管理學系碩士班 === 93 === The knowledge-sharing issue has become an important topic in the business organization when they face the era of knowledge economics. The main purpose of our research is to analyze knowledge-sharing behavior by integrating “Psychology Contract” and “Hierarchical Model of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation.” In our sample, 211 knowledge workers who often use IT to share their knowledge of daily work with their colleagues were included. There are three major conclusions being produced by our study. First, commitment and motivation are two important factors that would affect knowledge-sharing behavior. We find that there has a big difference between the knowledge-sharing behaviors caused by the two factors. Knowledge-sharing behavior would be influenced more when they are caused by motivation than those caused by commitment. Second, motivation won’t be affected directly by commitment in our study, only if the needs were being motivated, commitment would produce significant impact on motivation. Third, motivation would be influenced directly by needs of employee toward knowledge-sharing behavior, furthermore, needs of autonomy and relatedness influence motivation more than needs of competence. 　 Our study has three main contributions. First, the hypothesis of the Hierarchical Model of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation (HMIEM) that could be used to promote knowledge-sharing behavior in organization has been proved. Second, we suggest that organization can efficiently promote their knowledge-sharing behavior by exploiting the traits of conformity and needs to design a knowledge-sharing mechanism. Third, the result of commitment won’t have direct influence on motivation as the model of the psychological contract said was finding by our study. Therefore, knowledge won’t be shared directly by staff as organization expected, organization should find someway to intrigue the needs of employee toward knowledge-sharing behavior before asking them to share their knowledge.