Impact of views about knowledge and workplace relationships on tacit knowledge sharing

ABSTRACT

Tacit Knowledge Sharing (TKS) becomes vital for new knowledge creation. Knowledge creation process encourages the view of knowledge as a public good while knowledge appropriation process encourages knowledge to be viewed as a private good. This paper studies the impact of these views about knowledge on TKS. Based on social interdependency theory, four workplace relationships were identified for studying TKS. “Knowledge as a public good” and “knowledge as a private good” were used as indicator variables. Using OLS regression, the four proposed models were tested. Data for the study was obtained from a questionnaire-based survey of 184 research students. The results revealed “knowledge as non-exclusive” to be a positive predictor of TKS. Viewing knowledge as a private good had a negative relationship with TKS. Implications for research and practitioners are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Tacit knowledge sharing
• non-exclusivity
• non-rivalry
• workplace relationships
• public good
• private good

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.