La importancia de la motivación y la oportunidad para fomentar y compartir conocimiento en la organización

Abstract

The literature considers knowledge sharing among individuals and groups within organizations as a critical issue for organizational performance, especially in those companies that need to innovate continually in order to maintain the competitive advantage. However, frequently this process is not developed successfully in organizations, and as a consequence, the performance it not improved. Existing research shows that individuals tend to preserve their knowledge instead of sharing it, and that even when they are willing to, sharing knowledge, especially the tacit one, is a difficult and complex activity that implies to use a considerable effort and time. Therefore, managerial interventions are needed in order to promote and to facilitate this behaviour on behalf of individuals. Because of the importance and complexity associated to knowledge sharing processes, a number of recent papers have tried to identify the factors that must be managed to guarantee the adequate development of this process. However, despite of the effort done, the question about how organizations should facilitate and motivate people to share their knowledge is still a challenge for researchers. The present paper adopts an integrative framework, considering that the extent to which employees share knowledge depends on two groups of factors: motivational factors and factors that create the opportunity to share knowledge. Regarding motivational factors, we consider affective commitment as an intrinsic motivator, and human resource management practices as an extrinsic motivator. With regard to opportunity factors, we distinguish between formal enablers, such as information and communication technologies, and structured teamwork, and informal enablers, like informal communication. Hypotheses have been tested on a sample of 87 R&D departments of innovative firms. The results obtained show that all the factors considered, except information and communication technologies, are important determinants of the extent to which knowledge is shared in the organization.