Exploring motivation to engage in intraorganizational knowledge sharing: a mixed-methods approach

Purpose – Intraorganizational knowledge and information sharing are important steps toward more- accessibleorganizationalknowledge.Theaimofthisstudyistoqualitativelyexplore factorsthatcontributeto employees ’ motivations for sustaining intraorganizational knowledge-sharing behaviors and to examine the impact of these factors in a quantitative study with the Austrian Federal Ministry of Defense. This ministry faces a retirement wave in the next 5 – 10 years. Intraorganizational knowledge sharing before, during, and following this wave will play a decisive role for the organization in the near future. Design/methodology/approach – An exploratory sequential mixed-methods study was conducted. The studydesigninvolvedaqualitativestudyphasewithexpertinterviewsandstakeholderworkshops( n 5 9)and a quantitative study phase based on a cross-sectional online survey with an implicit association test on intraorganizational knowledge sharing ( n 5 59). Findings – In the qualitative study phase, three main research topics regarding intraorganizational knowledgesharingwereidentified:employeeattitude,organizationalsupport,andspecificrelationalaspectsofknowledgetransfer,suchasreciprocalrelationshipsamongemployeesandopportunitiesforknowledge exchange. A hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that perceived organizational support was the onlyfactorthatwasasignificantpredictorofmotivationforengaginginknowledgesharing.Wealsoanalyzedthedataformoderationeffectsanddemonstratedthatsociopsychologicalfactors(e.g.,theengagementoropennessofcolleaguestosharetheirknowledge)furtherstrengthenedthepositiverelationshipbetweenemployees ’ perceived support and personal willingness to share knowledge. We conclude that an organizational culture that supports knowledge sharing withintheorganizationishighlyrelevantformotivatingemployeestosharetheirknowledge.Practitionerswillalsobenefitfromtheinsightsofthevariousdimensionsofemployees ’ willingness to engage in knowledge- sharing behaviors to better design further interventions in organizations. purpose, interviews and workshops with experts and stakeholders in the organization were conducted. The qualitative findings were incorporated into a quantitative survey and an implicit association test for the employeesoftheorganization.Thisapproachdemonstratesadifferentandmoreholisticapproachtoanalyzingareal-worldprobleminthecontextofagovernmentalagencyinordertoinvestigatethemultidimensionalandcomplextopicofintraorganizationalknowledgesharing. government. She studies the political, social and economic implications of ICT, and how these developments impact traditional forms of work and governance structures. research focus on the effects of technology on state, society and economy as well as the necessary changes in strategies, policies and in both legal and organizational systems.


Introduction
For businesses and governments alike, knowledge is an essential element of strategic organizational design (e.g., Carayannis et al., 2021;Drucker, 2012;Ichijo and Nonaka, 2007), and the optimal management of this asset is considered a vital component of organizational success (Al Ahbabi et al., 2019;Farooq, 2018). While an organization's success depends increasingly on effective and dynamic knowledge management (KM), successful knowledge management is strongly related to employee behavior, especially to knowledge sharing among employees (Chopra and Gupta, 2019).
Sustaining organizational knowledge is crucial for the viability and competitiveness of any organization (Ichijo and Nonaka, 2007), particularly in regard to digital transformation (Di Vaio et al., 2021). Therefore, any disruptive knowledge loss, such as that resulting from retirement waves, threatens the organization's resilience and sustainable development (Steiner, 2018). As a result, interest in KM has become a strategic agenda item for public and private managers and decision-makers (Singh et al., 2019). It offers the means to balance business objectives with the organizational knowledge base as well as enabling growth and further competitive advantages (Al-Kurdi et al., 2018). The challenge for an organization's successful KM, therefore, is the development of an adequate system of KM and KM strategies, such as intraorganizational knowledge sharing, that address determinants related to the dynamics of the organizational knowledge base (Nadason et al., 2017). Thus, to achieve the desired benefit from KM strategies, organizations must encourage intraorganizational knowledge-sharing behaviors and sustain the appropriate culture needed to nurture them (Halisah et al., 2021;Intezari et al., 2017).
Although KM methods and technologies have changed tremendously over recent decades, certain underlying human factors (Ichijo and Nonaka, 2007) and interpersonal relationships (Cross et al., 2001) have remained highly relevant. Concerning intraorganizational knowledge sharing, Ipe (2003) provided a conceptual framework and suggested that the sharing of knowledge is influenced by the motivation of individuals to engage in knowledge sharing, the nature of the knowledge shared, the opportunities available for individuals to share and, above all, the culture of the particular work environment. Various empirical studies and theories have discussed the different reasons for intraorganizational knowledge sharing or even knowledge hiding (Gagn e et al., 2019) and have concluded that intrinsic motivational drivers are determining factors (Demircioglu and Chen, 2019;Malik et al., 2019;Nguyen et al., 2019).
Effective knowledge sharing is contingent on individuals' willingness to pass along their knowledge instead of hoarding it and is likely to be motivated in a way similar to prosocial behavior, which is challenging to achieve through pressure or rewards (Babi c et al., 2019;Graham et al., 2019). Employees can only be encouraged, enabled and motivated to engage in knowledge exchange with colleagues (Zbuchea et al., 2019). Although the culture, organizational prerequisites and technology play a vital role in employees' knowledgesharing behaviors, many motivational drivers are concerned with human factors (Ghobadi and Mathiassen, 2016;Nadason et al., 2017;Yang et al., 2019). Knowledge sharing seems to be complicated by the existence of barriers that hinder the transfer of knowledge from source to Intraorganizational knowledge sharing recipient (Meril€ ainen et al., 2017) and, thereby, reduce the prospects of individuals being willing to engage in knowledge sharing. Potentially significant barriers, such as the tendency of employees to hoard knowledge for fear of losing personal power within the organization, as well as motivational drivers must be identified in the knowledge-management process to enable and motivate knowledge-sharing behaviors (Nguyen et al., 2019). In today's knowledge society, the sustainable knowledge base of organizations is increasingly threatened by more job-changing among knowledge workers (Gaudencio et al., 2021;Razzaq et al., 2019). As a result, KM approaches that focus on intraorganizational dynamics are considered of even greater importance. For example, Alexandru et al. (2019) investigated the KM approaches utilized by small-and medium-sized knowledge-intensive business services and emphasized that future research should include other organizational forms and economic sectors. To further investigate this research topic, we selected a publicsector organization, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Defense. This ministry is of particular interest compared to other organizations because it has enjoyed a low rate of employee turnover in recent decades, due in part to the employment of civil servants who have accrued and developed relevant knowledge. However, the ministry will face a retirement wave over the next 5-10 years, and intraorganizational knowledge sharing before, during and after this wave will play a decisive role. The organization's resilience is critically important, not only for the ministry itself but also for numerous other organizations, ministries and the state itself, for reasons related to national defense, disaster control and, at the present time, the implementation of rapid interventions during the pandemic, among others. Compared to private organizations, insolvency is not an option, and continuous further development is of high strategic significance. This ministry is also an interesting case because, on the one hand, the internal sharing of knowledge has become more important due to employee turnover, but on the other hand, care must be taken to ensure that knowledge, such as military secrets, is not shared with unauthorized persons. The experience and expertise that may be lost when employees leave the ministry represent a challenge for this knowledge organization and highlight the need for more-effective KM strategies in all organizations to bolster resilience as the dynamic global market steadily accelerates.
Consequently, this study focuses on those factors that have a decisive influence on the motivation for intraorganizational knowledge sharing. Applying a mixed-methods approach, we explored the most important factors based on qualitative studies and examined their effects on motivation among civil servants to engage in intraorganizational knowledge sharing by conducting a quantitative study.

Methods
Following an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design as proposed by Creswell (2014), we conducted a qualitative study phase including stakeholder workshops and expert interviews to elicit the specific problem situation and to identify relevant motivational drivers of intraorganizational knowledge sharing to be investigated within the quantitative study (see Figure 1) [1].

Qualitative study phase
The qualitative study phase was conducted in two stages. First, semi-structured individual in-depth interviews about knowledge transfer were conducted with four executives from different organizational units in the Austrian Federal Ministry of Defense. The objective was to elicit and capture knowledge based on each individual's experience and practical knowledge about knowledge sharing within the ministry. Second, we conducted additional workshops based on a transdisciplinary approach (Scholz and Steiner, 2015) with five K 51,13 stakeholders from the Ministry of Defense and two researchers for this publication. According to a comprehensively designed stakeholder-engagement process, different stakeholder perspectives were discussed and integrated (Provasnek et al., 2018). Following the guiding theme of barriers and opportunities regarding a sustainable KM process, system models were jointly developed to gain a deeper understanding of intraorganizational knowledge sharing (Steiner, 2008).

Quantitative study phase
As part of the quantitative study phase, a cross-sectional survey and a customized implicit association test (IAT) were developed. The survey and the IAT were sent to departments of the Ministry of Defense selected during the previous workshops. The researchers developed and conducted a cross-sectional online survey that included participants' demographics and comprised six main research items of intraorganizational knowledge sharing evaluated on a 5-point Likert-type scale (see Table 1).
Different implicit measures are widely used in cognitive science (Nosek et al., 2011). In this study, a customized, web-based IAT was developed to additionally measure implicit attitudes toward employees' knowledge-sharing behaviors, where two categories ("Share knowledge" and "Hoard knowledge") and the corresponding items were elicited from transdisciplinary workshops , and two categories ("Good" and "Bad") and the corresponding items were adopted from IATs that were previously empirically tested (Nosek et al., 2002(Nosek et al., , 2007. The concept of IATs is guided by the assumption that participants can assign words more quickly to congruent and closely associated categories as opposed to incongruent categories or categories that are closely associated with a given word (Greenwald et al., 2009 Intraorganizational knowledge sharing Specifically, during the congruent phase, the categories "Share knowledge" and "Good" as well as "Hoard knowledge" and "Bad" were displayed as it was assumed that these categories were congruent. During the incongruent phase, the categories "Share knowledge" and "Bad" as well as "Hoard knowledge" and "Good" were shown (see Table 2). The online crosssectional survey and the IAT were sent to 116 civil servants in selected departments of the ministry.

Qualitative analysis
One of the key determinants regarding knowledge sharing that was identified during the first phase of the qualitative study was that the corporate culture facilitates knowledge sharing. Reciprocity was also a requirement for knowledge sharing, i.e., the expectation that employees who share knowledge will also receive knowledge from others. In addition, the following relevant factors were identified: employees' intrinsic motivation to share knowledge, the effects of digital transformation, technical support and knowledge documentation in the ministry, as well as the generation gap.
As a final result of the first phase of the qualitative analysis, we deduced three relevant research topics that, in accordance with the aforementioned current literature, identify important determinants for the sharing of knowledge. First, employees' attitudes toward knowledge sharing proved to be a significant variable in the investigation of the determinants for knowledge sharing. All employees acknowledged the importance of knowledge sharing but, at the same time, expressed concerns regarding loss of power within the organization as a result when sharing knowledge with colleagues. Second, different aspects regarding organizational support were mentioned that could be improved, for example, support received from other colleagues and supervisors from within the department. Third, sociopsychological aspects (e.g., advice networks for openly asking questions) as well as opportunities for knowledge transfer (e.g., contact networks to reach colleagues and having an overview of the available knowledge resources) were identified as relevant topics in this organization, as also described in other organizational studies on knowledge sharing (Cross et al., 2001).

Quantitative analysis
In total, 116 persons from the selected departments were invited by e-mail to participate in the study, and 59 participants completed the whole survey including the web-based IAT. In this sample (and in the entire organization), there was an imbalance in terms of sex, which is the reason that more men than women filled out the questionnaire. Furthermore, as the interviews have already indicated, a large proportion of the employees in our sample have been with the ministry for more than 15 years. Detailed sample demographics of the respondents are presented in Table 3. All analyses were conducted using SPSS, and Hayes macro PROCESS for SPSS was used to examine moderating effects. We present means, standard deviations and correlation coefficients of all six main items of the survey and the values of implicit attitude in Table 4. Five of the six main items showed high values (between 4.24 and 4.67 on a 5-point Likert-type scale), and only the item organizational support showed a lower value of 3.50. For the value of implicit attitudes toward employees' knowledge-sharing behaviors, we calculated D values, the standardized differences of the mean reaction times of the congruent and incongruent phases of the test, according to the procedure described by Greenwald et al. (2003). Positive values of the D score indicate an associative strength between "Share knowledge" and "Good" as well as an associative strength between "Hoard knowledge" and "Bad"; negative values indicate a reverse association, that is, "Share knowledge" and "Bad" and "Hoard knowledge" and "Good" (see Table 2). The results show an average positive D value of 0.70, which can be interpreted similarly to Cohen's d (Cohen, 2013). The result indicates a strong positive effect for the implicit association between "Share knowledge" and "Good." Regarding the correlation coefficients, only the item support correlates with the dependent variable motivation; no other independent variables show a direct effect on motivation. Several of the predictor variables correlate with each other with a correlation coefficient of up to r 5 0.62, but the collinearity statistics were all within acceptable limits. Therefore, multicollinearity is not an issue in the regression model; the VIF values ranged from 1.00 to 2.08.
A four-stage hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that the implicit attitude of employees toward knowledge-sharing behaviors was not a significant predictor and explained only 3% of the variation in employees' self-reported motivation to share Intraorganizational knowledge sharing knowledge. By contrast, perceived organizational support was a significant predictor of the motivation to engage in knowledge sharing and explained an additional 20% of the variation. Neither the variable openness nor engagement contributed significantly. The addition of the factors of openness and engagement of knowledge owners to share their knowledge and experiences explained less than 1%. This change in R 2 in model 3 was not significant. Likewise, adding the two factors of information flow, that is, the overview of colleagues' knowledge and access to colleagues' knowledge, to the regression model did not significantly improve the prediction (see Table 5).
Although the VIF values of engagement (VIF 5 1.91; tolerance 5 0.524) and access (VIF 5 2.08; tolerance 5 0.481) were below 4.00 and tolerance was above 0.25, collinearity seems to be a constraint in the current data analysis, considering the negative coefficients of engagement and access, as reported in Table 5. This conjecture is reinforced by considering the relatively high correlation in Table 4.
In exploratory analyses, we evaluated the moderating effects of the four independent variables (openness, engagement, overview and accessibility; see Table 1) in the association between support and motivation (see Table 6).
Further analyses of simple slopes regarding support predict motivation at three levels of openness ( Figure 2) and engagement (Figure 3) one standard deviation below the mean, at the mean, and one standard deviation above the mean (see Table 7).
First, the analyses showed that, for lower values of openness, there was no relationship between support and motivation. At the mean level and one standard deviation above the mean of openness, there was a significant positive relationship between support and motivation to share knowledge.
Second, engagement moderated both the relationship between support and motivation. Again, support and motivation were found to be significantly related when engagement was at the mean and one standard deviation above the mean but not when engagement was one standard deviation below the mean.
Step 4. Discussion Using a mixed-methods approach, the study explored and examined factors that have a decisive influence on the motivation for intraorganizational knowledge sharing. On the one hand, we employed qualitative research methods such as interviews and workshops. On the other, we conducted a quantitative study to examine their impact on the motivation to engage in intraorganizational knowledge sharing in the case of the Austrian Ministry of Defense. In the qualitative study phase, we identified relevant factors regarding knowledge sharing and deduced the following relevant research topics: employees' implicit attitudes, organizational support as well as sociopsychological aspects (openness, engagement) and opportunities for  The scaling of the y-axis starts at 3 as no values were smaller Intraorganizational knowledge sharing knowledge transfer (access, overview). For the quantitative study, we used a survey and a specialized web-based IAT and performed regression and exploratory analyses to further investigate these topics in the context of the ministry. Following our main research question addressing motivational drivers for intraorganizational knowledge sharing, the findings of the quantitative study conducted with employees at the ministry demonstrate that perceived organizational support is a strong predictor of the motivation to share knowledge within the ministry. Compared to other studies that have also investigated the impact of specific forms of organizational support and distinguished between formal support (such as training) and informal support by supervisors or employees (Brockner et al., 2020), in this study we examined organizational support using an overall assessment based on the assumption that employees form a general belief about the extent to which their contributions are valued and supported within their organization (Mowday et al., 2013). The results of the qualitative and quantitative analyses strengthen the view that the working environment in the ministry can cultivate social ("sharing") norms through supportive measures and that sharing knowledge represents an internalized behavior of social norms. Facilitating intraorganizational knowledge sharing is already an ongoing process in the ministry, with efforts being made to implement appropriate measures.    Two measures, among others, were already beginning to be implemented in the course of this study: (1) best practices for knowledge-management methods were evaluated in specific departments in order to introduce them in other departments, and (2) technological solutions for improved knowledge sharing were evaluated and realized in pilot cases.
In the qualitative study phase, the factor sociopsychological aspects was identified as a potential prerequisite for employees' willingness to share their knowledge with colleagues. However, we did not observe any statistically significant effects on motivation. We are aware that a corporate work environment is much more than the culture of perceived openness and/ or peer engagement. Investigating the impact of reciprocal relationships would require an inquiry into the interactions occurring between specific partners or co-workers to determine their particular impact on current motivation. However, while conducting an exploratory approach with the aim of specifying the items on the questionnaire, both openness and engagement were revealed as being important factors of the work environment within the departments of the Ministry of Defense. Although we could not find any direct effects of these two factors, both strengthen the impact effect of employees' perceived support on motivation. Indeed, as Ipe (2003) had already claimed, knowledge sharing is a complex process of interrelated factors that, together, create an optimal environment for knowledge sharing within an organization (Obermayer and Toth, 2019). We postulate that disregarding the role of sociopsychological processes in the strengthening of intraorganizational knowledgesharing behaviors would reduce the positive impact of supportive measures undertaken by the organization to promote knowledge sharing.
The factor opportunities for knowledge transfer proved to be an important motivational driver in the qualitative study phase. Based on the cross-sectional survey, however, the variables (overview and access) could not predict an employee's self-reported motivation to impart knowledge. Given these different findings, we conclude that there have been problems in the process of transforming the relevant factors of the preliminary studies to specific items of the quantitative study. The reason could be that the quantitative logic of this study may have influenced the slant of the findings of the preliminary study. We are aware that there is also a risk that the relevant factors will not be fully represented, as the identified factors depend on the sample involved in the qualitative prestudy (Burzan, 2016).
The value of the implicit attitude of employees at the ministry toward knowledge sharing was high; however, it was not a significant predictor of engaging in knowledge sharing. Compared to explicit self-reporting, the IAT was shown to be robust in socially sensitive domains and is very difficult for participants to feign (Greenwald et al., 2009). Hence, the measurement of implicit associations is an important variable for investigating knowledge sharing. However, a limitation in interpreting our results is that we cannot determine the extent to which a high (implicit) positive attitude toward knowledge sharing was captured. In recent years, the measurement of implicit attitudes has been criticized by opponents of the method. The main criticisms are poor reliability (Brownstein et al., 2019) and the capability of the IAT and other implicit measures to predict the behavior of individuals. Recent studies have stressed that the IAT is a context-sensitive measure that depends on participants' social environments (Jost, 2019). Therefore, implicit measures may be useful for analyzing social systems such as organizations. Instead of a person-centric approach, the aggregation of implicit measures is robust and stable and could be used in future studies on intraorganizational knowledge sharing (Payne et al., 2017).
Moreover, applying an exploratory research design in evaluating important determinants of knowledge transfer by incorporating the perspectives of different actors and stakeholders was an essential first step in exploring potential motivational drivers of intraorganizational knowledge sharing. Nevertheless, the current study also has several limitations. As briefly described in the qualitative analysis, a variety of additional factors were found that could potentially impact knowledge sharing among ministry staff; these include generation gaps, Intraorganizational knowledge sharing knowledge documentation and multiple aspects of digitalization and digital transformation. Furthermore, we expect that several factors influencing employee motivation to engage in knowledge sharing were not identified in the qualitative studies. The consideration of additional individual factors, such as self-efficacy, may have also helped augment this study's explanatory significance power. In future studies, several additional variables could be included, in particular, a broader range of different aspects regarding organizational support.

Conclusion
Intraorganizational knowledge sharing is regarded as vital for achieving and sustaining organizational success in the age of knowledge workers. We consider that a strategy focused on sustainability and resilience calls for ongoing and facilitated processes of knowledge transfer within an organization. Furthermore, crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrate the need for ongoing intraorganizational knowledge transfer to adapt to a changing and unpredictable environment by bringing together knowledge seekers and knowledge sources (United Nations Development Programme, 2020). In crisis situations, organizations are required to take actions outside their established practices and routines, to make decisions quickly within a rapidly changing environment and to improvise in certain situations (Ciuchta et al., 2021). For this purpose, an increased exchange of knowledge within the organization is essential in order to utilize and benefit from existing knowledge resources of the relevant domains of the organization and to develop new options for action in unforeseen situations (Zenk et al., 2020). Through an exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach, our study has highlighted several critical factors that can be applied to the delineation of an effective practical strategy for dynamic knowledge management based on organizational learning. One of our main conclusions is that organizational support can be considered a particularly important factor for knowledge sharing, as it proved to be significant both in the qualitative study phase and in the quantitative study conducted at the Austrian Federal Ministry of Defense. Moreover, the employees indicated that they are very motivated to share their knowledge, yet the qualitative and quantitative analyses showed that they require more technical and administrative support from the organization in order to do so. Facing a retirement wave and, thereby, a significant knowledge loss in the coming years, the ministry has already begun to implement specific measures to support the exchange of knowledge between employees; this appears to be reflected in the quantitative data. Based on additional surveys, the employees' needs for social, administrative and technological support could be further assessed in order to implement targeted interventions. In these dynamic environments, in particular, we consider a supportive knowledge organization to be a powerful system that, through appropriate interventions and innovations, is able to respond to crisis-related system disruptions such as epidemics or massive knowledge loss. This can serve as a promising approach to ultimately increase the organization's resilience in turbulent times. government. She studies the political, social and economic implications of ICT, and how these developments impact traditional forms of work and governance structures.
Peter Parycek is Full Professor for E-Governance, Head of the Department for E-Governance and Administration at the Danube University Krems. His research interests focus on the effects of technology on state, society and economy as well as the necessary changes in strategies, policies and in both legal and organizational systems.
Gerald Steiner is Full Professor of Organizational Communication and Innovation, Dean of the Faculty of Business and Globalization, and chair of the Department for Knowledge and Communication Management at Danube University Krems. He is a former J.A. Schumpeter Professor and visiting scholar at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
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