The Impact of Social Capital on Employees’ Knowledge-Sharing Behavior: An Empirical Analysis of U.S. Federal Agencies

ABSTRACT:

Recent critical challenges, including terrorism and an aging workforce, have brought to the attention of U.S. government agencies the need to share their knowledge across and within government organizations. In response to the growing awareness of knowledge sharing in the public sector, data from the Federal Human Capital Survey (FHCS) were utilized to develop and test a social-capital-theory-based extension of the relationship between social capital dimension and knowledge-sharing behavior by looking at the interaction effects between social capital dimensions and information technology (IT). The study also explores whether the social capital dimensions that affect knowledge sharing differ across three managerial levels (nonsupervisory, supervisory, and senior executive service). The findings provide insights and management strategies into social capital to stimulate knowledge sharing among employees in organizations. The contributions and implications of the findings are discussed.

KEYWORDS::

• federal government employees
• knowledge management
• knowledge-sharing
• social capital theory

Notes

A caveat: The measure of organizational commitment in this study is not precise or perfect. This is not uncommon for studies using secondary data such as the Federal Human Capital Survey. Because FHCS was not developed by researchers to test theories, but was designed for human capital purposes, the selection of survey questions was limited (Caillier, 2012). Thus, caution is warranted when interpreting the results.

Using a larger sample allows the researcher to increase the significance level of the relationships between the independent and dependent variables, because the higher the sample size, the more confident the results (O’Sullivan et al., 2008). Thus, it might be helpful to consider the relative importance of each variable in addition to focusing on the magnitude of the coefficients when interpreting the impact of independent variables.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yujin Choi

Yujin Choi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Administration at the College of Social Sciences, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea. Her research focuses on public and nonprofit management with a particular interest in knowledge sharing, collaboration, and diversity.