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This paper aims to study the impact of the interactive effect of knowledge characteristics – tacitness, specificity and availability – and resource structure – complementarily and asymmetric – on learning race behavior among international joint venture (IJV) partners in China.

Preliminary in-depth interviews with three IJV managers were conducted to develop and evaluate the tentatively developed questionnaire. The finalized survey questionnaire was distributed to middle and top-level managers of IJVs, resulting in a total of 124 usable surveys. The psychometric properties of data were evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha and confirmatory factor analysis and hypotheses were tested using a generalized linear model.

The results show that partners in IJV have low tendencies to acquire tacit and specific knowledge, but, when the resource is complementary, it stimulates the learning race. Also, when resources are asymmetric, IJV partners engage in the learning race more aggressively, particularly for highly specific knowledge. The situation reverses for highly available knowledge.

The findings provide important insights for both researchers and managers on knowledge characteristics and resource structure influencing learning race behavior. This insight allows firms to leverage features of knowledge and resource conditions to prevent or facilitate the learning race for either common or private interests.

This study aims to evaluate the impact of extrinsic, intrinsic and amotivation on an individual’s knowledge-sharing behavior.

The authors reviewed the literature on self-determination theory (SDT) as an applied predictor of knowledge-sharing behavior, and documented the extent to which SDT conceptual framework components have been studied in relation to predict knowledge sharing.

Building from SDT and its sub-theories, this study uncovers a gap in the knowledge-sharing literature as the continuum of the SDT framework has yet to fully be applied to knowledge-sharing behavior.

Contributing to the literature on knowledge management and knowledge sharing, this study is the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, of its kind to apply Deci and Ryan’s self-determination continuum, in its entirety, to a knowledge-sharing conceptual framework. The authors thereby address the potential impact of amotivation on an individual’s knowledge-sharing behavior.

This paper aims to review ethical issues inherent in the theorisation and practice of knowledge management (KM) with specific attention to the conflict of knowledge ownership between organisations and individual employees.

Relevant literature was identified and reviewed via EPSCO host and ISIWeb.

The paper notes that knowledge, although rooted in individuals, is often claimed or treated as owned by organisations, creating a conflict of knowledge ownership. The paper argues that such an approach to appropriation and management of knowledge leads to tension in knowledge processes between organisations and individuals, and also among individuals. This situation may, in turn, jeopardise individuals' knowledge processing behaviours, and pose difficulties to organisations in managing knowledge effectively.

Offers a number of potential research questions that may be turned into research hypotheses and assessed experimentally to refine and develop an ethical approach to KM.

Highlights the need for a renewed moral contract between individuals and organisations, built on ethical constructs of trust, fairness, and justice, which may in turn lead to effective KM practices.

Offers an original conceptual approach to understand and resolve the conflict of knowledge ownership between organizations and individuals.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether there is a tendency towards appropriation or participation of the individual in the literature of knowledge management (KM).

This is a literature review paper. In terms of approach, appropriation in this paper is referred to as the KM tasks assigned to individual employees by the management whereas participation is referred to as KM tasks determined jointly by individuals and management.

The review suggests that while the participation of individuals is seen as important for KM, the KM discourse is visibly oriented towards the appropriation of individual employees and their knowledge for better economic performance of organisations. The review suggests that an appropriation of the individual in KM serves neither employees nor organisations, and that individual employees are meant to be valued participants in the development and management of knowledge.

The paper is concerned with the KM literature to study the appropriation or participation of individual employees in the discourse on KM. Consequently other streams of literature that address individual employees’ participation are excluded from this study.

The paper initiates a new research agenda for KM where the emphasis shifts from the appropriation to the participation of the individual in the discourse on KM practices.