Towards a contingency model of knowledge sharing: interaction between social capital and social exchange theories

ABSTRACT

This paper develops a contingency model to examine whether the impact of costs and benefits (derived from social exchange theory) are contingent upon factors related to the social context, such as norms and generalized trust (derived from social capital theory) in virtual communities. In general, the results suggest that costs negatively affected one’s intention to share knowledge, whereas benefits positively affect one’s intention to share knowledge. Particularly, while the effort of knowledge sharing has a direct effect on one’s intention to share knowledge, the effect of loss of knowledge power is contingent upon pro-sharing norms. While two intrinsic benefits (enjoyment in helping others and social affiliation) have direct effects on one’s intention to share knowledge, the impact of the extrinsic benefit (i.e., online status seeking) is contingent upon prosharing norms. Generalized trust has also the potential to moderate the impact of online status seeking on one’s intention to share knowledge.

KEYWORDS:

• Moderators
• costs and benefits
• trust
• norms
• knowledge management
• online communities

Acknowledgement

We thank Catherine Connelly, professor of organizational behaviour at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University, for assistance and feedback on an earlier draft of the paper. Her comments greatly improved the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Following Deci and Ryan’s (1985, 2000) self-determination theory, the current research regarded affiliation (relatedness) as intrinsic motivation. However, we acknowledge that different perspectives exist especially when considering the opportunities that social affiliation can bring. For instance, social affiliation may bring the opportunity of social comparison, which “involves the seeking of information about a self-relevant issue from others when objective criteria for evaluation are not readily available” (Hill, 1987, p. 1009). If social affiliation is required for “reasons not related to its intrinsic rewardingness” (Hill, 1987, p. 1009), it may be regarded as internalised extrinsic motivation.