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Frank Moss :: Blog :: Behavioral Intention Formation in Knowledge Sharing

November 25, 2006

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Frank Moss

Behavioral Intention Formation in Knowledge Sharing

This is a pretty interesting subject that Gee-Woo Bock, Robert Zmud, Young-Gul Kim, and Jae-Nam Lee have studied empirically for us.  How is knowledge transferred from person to person within an organization?  What motivates the transference and the transferors?  


Bock et al have used the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) as the framework for their investigation.  I had to look this one up, as usual for me.  TRA, as it turns out, is a way of studying behaviors in terms of the attitudes towards behaviors. The current TRA framework was developed by a couple of guys named Fishbein and Ajzen in the late 1960s.  From my research, it looks like TRA has been used for a lot of behavioral prediction and control work, including marketing.  Fancy that.  


Another thing I found interesting that I need to validate, is Bock's (et al) definition of knowledge management as "the process of capturing, storing, sharing, and using knowledge", where Bock et al reference Davenport and Prusak's work from 1998.  


Since this is a holiday weekend, I'll make this pretty short.  


The unexpected result of Bock's (et al) study is that extrinsic motivators, like pay raises or promotions, actually impede the transfer of knowledge from person to person within organizations that they studied.  So, the willingness of an individual to transfer knowledge to his or her colleagues comes essentially from within, depending on how it makes them feel about themselves and how they perceive their colleagues feel about them.  I realize that the culture they conducted the study in was Korean, but I think it might translate pretty well to nearly everywhere else in the world.  


I think Bock et al could have included some graphical data representations for their data.  LIsts of numbers are not really meaningful for me.  I like to see charts and graphs, especially when a data analysis method like Partial Least Squares is used.  


Overall, I thought it was a pretty interesting study.  It contradicted what I would intuitively would believe motivates transference of knowledge within an organization.  

Keywords: behavior modification, knowledge management, knowledge transfer, motivation, organizational behavior, theory of reasoned action

Posted by Frank Moss

Comments

  1. I was also surprised that even though the companies studied had extrinsic motivators like mileage points and bonuses they were not the factor that influenced knowledge sharing.  I am not sure it would transfer well to all other countries--maybe Japan with very strong company loyalty and lifetime jobs.  But in the U.S. where layoffs are frequent and your knowledge is your currency, I suspect that it would take bonuses or promotions to extract a lot of a person's knowledge.  I also found it interesting that most of the hypotheses had attitude first and then intention second.

    Avra ElbingerAvra Elbinger on Sunday, 26 November 2006, 12:22 Pacific Standard Time # |

  2. Since there has been so much research on TRA, I wonder how applicable this study is for the field of IS. It seems to me that some of the recommended future work by these authors have already been done, such as knowledge brokering, before they published this article. I guess there are lags in publishing time that can make work seem outdated very easily.

    Karen LumKaren Lum on Sunday, 26 November 2006, 17:14 Pacific Standard Time # |

  3. The word that seems to be missing from the article is 'relationships.'  People share based on relationships.  The organization can foster certain relationships to create sharing environments.  I think that was one lesson from agile programming.  A certain level ofsSocializing is encouraged to create relationships that foster sharing.  In any case there has to be a reward of some kind.  As Frank pointed out elsewhere, it's a real challenge given the extreme competitiveness in U.S. companies.

    Sungsoo KimK. Douglas on Sunday, 26 November 2006, 18:47 Pacific Standard Time # |

  4. I agree with you that if the authors add some graphical data representations in this paper, it will be easier to understand the data. In addition, I think that extrinsic motivators do not work for knowledge sharing because of complexity of humans' behavior and attitude. They may feel guilty if they will share their knowledge due to rewards and money. They may think that their knowledge is much more valuable than money. Sometimes an human's thought is very difficult to understand and predict.

    Sumonta KasemvilasSumonta Kasemvilas on Sunday, 26 November 2006, 18:59 Pacific Standard Time # |

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