Transcript Toward an Understanding of Knowledge Sharing

自我介紹 - 傅振瑞
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中央大學資訊管理所博士班
中央大學資訊管理所碩士班
台灣大學造船工程學系
萬能科技大學資訊管理系講師
傅振瑞
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投稿狀況
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"Determinants of Taxpayers’ Adoption of Electronic Filing
Methods in Taiwan– An Exploratory Study," with C. K. Farn,
Journal of Government Information, conditional accepted.
(SSCI)
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"Toward an Understanding of Knowledge Sharing - The Effect of
Fairness Perception," with C. K. Farn, Journal of Management
Information Systems, under first revision. (SSCI)

"A Comparative Investigation of Taxpayers’ Intention towards
Using Electronic Tax-Filing System," with C. K. Farn,
Information & Management, under first review. (SSCI)
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"網路公民權之探討“, 萬能學報，民國八十九年六月。
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研討會
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傅振瑞、范錚強、趙文彬, "Differences between Users and Non-Users of Electronic Tax Filing MethodAn Exploratory Study," 第十五屆國際資訊管理學術研討會(ICIM)論文集,台灣台北，民國九十年五月
Cheng-Kiang Farn, Jen-Ruei Fu, "Toward an Understanding of Knowledge Sharing -The Effects of
Fairness Perception," International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS),
2004, Avila, Spain, July 2004
傅振瑞,"群組合作學習與學習成效的關係探討",第十四屆國際資訊管理學術研討會論文集，台灣嘉義，民
國九十二年六月
趙文彬、傅振瑞、范錚強, "影響納稅人對綜合所得稅申報方式之使用意向研究",第十四屆國際資訊管理
學術研討會(ICIM)論文集，台灣嘉義，民國九十二年六月
彭國芳、傅振瑞、范錚強、許通安,"策略實驗理論在電子商務環境下之修正-行動娛樂內容商務公司之個
案研究",第六屆企業經營管理個案研討會,民國九十二年4月22日
Jen-Ruei Fu, "Factors Influence Information and Knowledge Sharing in Organization", The Second
International Conference on Electronic Business, December 10, 2002.
Jen-Ruei Fu, " Cautions on the use of SERVQUAL Measure: an Examination of theoretical
assumptions", Eight ISSAT International Conference on Reliability and Quality in Design, August 2002.
傅振瑞，"資訊安全的內部威脅與控制機制-代理理論的觀點 "，第六屆資訊管理學術暨警政資訊實務研討
會，台灣桃園，民國九十一年五月，P312。
傅振瑞，"群體間的知識分享與信任-社會網路理論的觀點 "，第七屆資訊管理研究暨實務研討會，台灣台
北，民國九十年十二月，P20。
傅振瑞，"電子商務環境中的資訊隱私權 ─ 消費者行為觀點"，第一屆網站經營學術暨實務研討會，台灣
台北，民國八十九年五月。
傅振瑞, 范錚強，林建煌，"資訊負荷與情緒對消費者決策效果之實驗室研究"，第九屆國際資訊管理學術
研討會(ICIM)論文集，台灣台北，民國八十七年五月
陳振明、傅振瑞、胡光輝、戴基峰 (1997)，"中衛體系下軟體產業分工模式"，第八屆國際資訊管理學術
研討會(ICIM)論文集，台灣台北，民國八十六年五月，783-790。
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Toward an Understanding of
Knowledge Sharing
-The Effects of Fairness
Perception
Jen-Ruei Fu
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Introduction(1)
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Employees frequently resist sharing their
knowledge with the rest of the organization
(Ciborra and Patriota, 1998)
Knowledge sharing is a “voluntary act of
making information available to
others …sharer could pass information on,
but doesn’t have to” (Davenport, 1997).
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Introduction(2)
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Reasons for not sharing knowledge:
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Motivation
epistemological impossibility of articulating
knowledge
The interaction between the two remains a
less explored and complex issue
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Introduction(3)
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There have been relatively few studies that
examined the influence of fairness perception
on employees’ propensity to share knowledge.
Extant empirical studies on motivation of
knowledge workers are not abundantly
available
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Research Objective
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Build on the equity theory (Adam, 1965) and
the information sharing theory (Constant et al,
1994), this study seeks to enhance
understanding of the perceptual determinants
of people’s propensity to share knowledge.
examined how the nature of knowledge
moderates the relationship between
employees’ fairness perception and
knowledge sharing propensity.
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Theoretical Background
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Does people share knowledge based on prosocial attitude?
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More on altruism, trust, and self-control rather
than on reasons of rational self-interest (Kim et al.
1998).
pro-social behavior must be performed both
spontaneously and voluntarily (Kelloway and
Barling, 1999)
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Exchange Theory
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Individuals evaluate alternative courses of action in
order to maximize the payoff at lowest cost from any
transaction completed.
Blau (1964) differentiates social exchange from
economic exchange.
Knowledge exchanges
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Economic exchange: an expectation of some future return
from sharing (Jarvenpaa and Staples, 2001).
Social exchange: no understanding of the value of what
has been shared and no clear expectation of exact future
return
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Equity theory
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The ratio of outcomes (e.g., pay or
promotions) to inputs (e.g., effort or
contribution) determines the values attributed
to the exchange.
A perceived unfair situation will create tension
and distress, the individual will be motivated
to reduce the tension (e.g. change input).
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Distributive and Procedural
Justice
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Distributive justice relates to individual’s perception
of how resources and rewards are distributed.
people care not only about the outcome of decisions,
but also about the procedures used to make
decisions
procedural justice is concerned with the impact of
the fairness of decision making procedures on the
attitudes and behavior of the people involved
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Information Sharing Theory
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Information sharing is affected by rational
self-interest as well as the social and
organizational context.
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The context is important because it differentiates
information sharing from those simple exchanges
where individuals act simply from rational selfinterest.
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Expertise v.s. Information
Product
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Attitudes towards information sharing depend
on the nature of the information being shared.
Sharing tangible information work may
depend on pro-social attitudes and norms of
organizational ownership
information as expertise is a special kind of
information that is part of an individual's
identity and is self-expressive
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Information as product
Self interest
Reciprocity
Pro-Social
attitudes
Work experience
Organizational
ownership norm
Work training
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Propensity
to Share
Information as Expertise
Self expression
Self consistency
Propensity
to share
Self interest
Reciprocity
Pro-Social
attitudes
Work experience
Organizational
ownership norm
Work training
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Research Model
Distributive
justice
Belief of
organizational
ownership
Propensity to
share
knowledge
Procedural
justice
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Tacit v.s. Explicit
Knowledge
Belief of Organizational
Ownership of Knowledge (1)
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Whether information and knowledge created by an
individual knowledge worker are believed to be owned
by the organization
A common organizational norm :
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“an information outcome of work such as an idea, process,
invention, document, or computer program that an employee
creates or acquires at work or using organizational resources
actually belongs to the employer rather than to the employee.”
Those who control the asset also tend to assume (or
are credited by others with) ownership (Heider, 1958),
control and ownership are intertwined
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Belief of Organizational
Ownership of Knowledge (2)
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According to the information sharing theory,
employees are more likely to share
information if they assign organizational
ownership rights to their work.
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Hypothesis 1: Beliefs about organizational
ownership of knowledge positively affect
one’s propensity to share.
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Fairness Perception and
Knowledge Sharing
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When employees are treated unfairly, they
may attach less organizational property rights
of their own knowledge as a balancing act.
if knowledge sharing is considered a work
input, then an employee’s response to
underpayment, perceived as an inequity,
could lead to the unwillingness to share
knowledge.
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Distributive Justice
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When employees cannot get commensurate
benefits from their organization, a decrease in
beliefs of organizational ownership of knowledge
and knowledge sharing would reflect a change to
their reward-to-input ratio.
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Hypothesis 2: Distributive justice positively affects
the belief of organizational ownership of knowledge.
Hypothesis 3: Distributive justice positively affects
the propensity toward knowledge sharing.
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Procedural justice
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Fair procedures may also have symbolic
meaning insofar as individuals are treated as
ends rather than means (Folger & Konovsky,
1989).
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self-interest perceptive
(Thibaut & Walker, 1975)
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People as being motivated primarily by a
desire to maximize their material gains.
Employees do not expect every decision
outcome that affects them to be favorable
because they recognize that decision makers
must take into account many competing
interests and issues.
Instead, they seek assurance that decision
makers will provide them with reasonably
favorable decision outcomes in the long-run.
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group value perceptive (Lind &
Tyler, 1988)
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Individuals generally have a strong sense of
affiliation with groups (e.g., organizations) of
which they are a member, and garner
psychological gains such as self-esteem and
self-identity from this affiliation.
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Hypothesis 4: Procedural justice positively
affects the belief of organizational ownership
of knowledge.
Hypothesis 5: Procedural justice positively
affects the propensity of knowledge sharing.
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Explicit versus Tacit
Knowledge(1)
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level of codification (Zander and Kogut, 1995)
Tangible information product and intangible
expertise are treated differently (Constant et
al., 1994), and the two types of information
have different meanings to people and
different social implications as well.
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Explicit versus Tacit
Knowledge(2)
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Explicit knowledge is discernible. It is easier for
organizations to monitor and track worker’s explicit
knowledge through information systems and
administrative procedures.
An employee would feel more obligated to share
and be responsible for hoarding explicit knowledge.
Sharing tacit knowledge is more ambiguous than
sharing explicit knowledge. An employee has more
control over his tacit work regardless of whomever
the knowledge belongs to.
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Explicit versus Tacit
Knowledge(3)
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the employee would share explicit knowledge
because he feels that the work organization
has a right to it, and they are willing to share
tacit knowledge even if the company does not
own the knowledge.
Hypothesis 6: Belief about organizational
ownership predicts the propensity to share
explicit knowledge more than to share tacit
knowledge.
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Explicit versus Tacit
Knowledge(4)
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The motivation to exchange knowledge is affected by whether
the decision to share is viewed as primarily economic and
motivated by self-interest, or non-economic and motivated by
community interest and moral obligation (Wasko and Faraj, 2000).
Distributive justice, or the fairness of decision outcomes, is the
typical metric for judging the fairness of transactional contracts
and economic exchange (Konovsky and Push, 1994).
Explicit knowledge is tradable (Osterloh and Frey, 2000) .
Managers are more able to observe how well workers with
individual knowledge have performed in this respect, and can
reward them accordingly.
Hypothesis 7: Distributive justice is more likely than procedural
justice to predict the propensity to share explicit knowledge.
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Research Method
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a cross-sectional study of on-the-job
students : college MIS majors and EMBA
students .
contrastive vignette technique (Burstin et al,
1980) was used to measure the propensity to
share in the tacit and explicit knowledge
sharing situations.
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Measurement of Constructs
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Dependent variable: Belief of organizational
ownership of knowledge and sharing
propensity were measured through vignettes.
Background: You and John are employees in
the same department. About a month ago,
you asked John for some help on a report
you were preparing since you knew John had
done some similar work in the recent part.
John refused your request (assume John had
time available to help).
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Vignette Description(1)- Explicit
knowledge
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Current Situation: you have just put 40 hours
of work into detailing steps toward completing
a specific job. Now, John would love to have
a copy of your presentation slides and
background notes for his own use and asks
you for a copy.
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Vignette Description (1)- tacit
knowledge
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Current Situation: you have just spent two
week at a workshop learning and practicing a
new and complex technique about problem
solving and analysis. Now, John has asked
you for some advice regarding your new
knowledge for his own internal use.
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Pretest
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The pretest measure for the degree of
tacitness was adapted from Zander and
Kogut (1995) and Subramaniam and
Venkatraman (2001)
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complexity, codifiability, and observability of
knowledge.
The significant difference were found between the
two scenarios(t=3.5, df=35, sig=0.001), which
suggests that the degree of tacitness is different
for each subject.
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Independent variable:
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Distributive Justice: five items assessing
the fairness of different work outcomes,
including pay level, work schedule, work load,
and job responsibilities (Niehoff and
Moorman (1993) )
Procedural Justice (Moorman 1991) .
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Data Analysis and Results
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Two variations of the questionnaires were
administrated randomly to students in the
classroom, with 522 students voluntarily
completed the survey.
491 usable responses
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219 responses for explicit knowledge (44.6%) and
272 responses for tacit knowledge (55.4%).
No significant differences were found between the
two groups of respondents for any of the variables,
at the .05 level.
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Scale validation
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two-step procedure recommended by Anderson and
Gerbing (1988)
Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed on
the data. Items that did not load heavily on the
primary factor and items that had significant crossloading(s) were removed.
Convergent and discriminant validity of the
remaining items and scales were then tested with
confirmatory factory analysis (CFA) using EQS
program (Bentler, 1987)
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Results
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Discussion(1)
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Moderating effects of the explicitness of knowledge
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Different types of fairness perception are more strongly
associated with sharing certain types of knowledge.
the sharing of intangible expertise have different meaning
to people from the sharing of tangible information product.
The finding of this study seem to imply the proposition that
social exchange characterizes the sharing of tacit
knowledge, and people are motivated to share explicit
knowledge based more on economic reasons.
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Discussion(2)
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Beliefs about organizational ownership
have stronger effects on individual’s
propensity to share explicit knowledge than to
share tacit knowledge.
Employees’ perceptions of organizational
justice are indeed related to their belief about
organizational ownership of knowledge and
sharing propensity, though they act in
different manners according to knowledge
type.
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Limitations and Future
Research Direction
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Subjects might not have been able to project
themselves fully into the given imaginary situation and
not respond as they would have in real life
Samples of this study may limit the generalizability of
results
cross-sectional design and correlational data which do
not provide irrefutable evidence of causation
all of the data are self-reported, giving rise to problems
associated with common-method variance.
It is unclear which specific effects of tacitness may
have on the employee’s propensity, but they represent
an interesting first step toward extensions of current
theories.
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Implications
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The moderating effect of knowledge type on
individual’s knowledge sharing propensity
Both perceived distributive and procedural
justice are important and necessary tools to
encourage employees’ motivation to share
knowledge.
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Conclusion
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our study builds on Constant et al.’s (1994) theory of
information sharing and extends it by incorporating
equity theory to demonstrate that employee’s
fairness perception of an organization influences his
propensity to share knowledge
manipulates the knowledge type into distinctions of
explicitness/tacitness rather than information
product/expertise to empirically examine its
moderating effect on the individual’s sharing
propensity
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Constant et al.’s (1994) theory is a robust
basis to develop not just an information
sharing theory, but moreover, a knowledge
sharing theory (Jarvenpaa and Staples,
2000).
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Theory of information sharing has still not
received the research attention
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Q&A
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