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This study sought to examine the detailed mechanism of employee perceptions of commitment-based human resource practices (CBHRPs) to employee knowledge-sharing behavior (i.e. knowledge collection and knowledge contribution) by unveiling the “black box” of trust in the workplace.

Based on data from 383 employees in China's Top Innovators in 2016, path analysis was used to test six hypotheses.

Employee perceptions of CBHRPs, namely, selection, incentives and training and development, were positively related to employees' trust in coworkers, supervisors and the organization, which in turn was positively related to employees' knowledge collection and contribution behavior. Trust in the workplace fully mediated the relationship between employee perceptions of CBHRPs and employee knowledge sharing. Among CBHRPs, training and development practices had the strongest effects on employees' knowledge-sharing behavior. Among trust, trust in coworkers was found to be the closest related to knowledge-sharing behavior. Knowledge contribution was more related to CBHRPs through trust than knowledge collection was.

Organizations can employ CBHRPs to enhance trust in the workplace and encourage employees to contribute toward and collect knowledge. Organizations need to pay more attention to employees' long-term investment, such as employee training and development. Organizations can perform human resource practices consistently and ensure that all employees are aware of practices in use to enhance employees' understanding of these practices.

This study provides a detailed understanding of the relationship between human resource management and knowledge sharing. It also presents new empirical evidence in the research fields of human resource management and knowledge management, with implications for the development of employees' knowledge-sharing behavior.

Sharing of knowledge has always been accredited as the indispensable segment of knowledge management. As knowledge management practices are growing within the organizations, it is important that correspondingly, valid and reliable knowledge sharing behavior scales are developed to avoid validation issues. Therefore, this composition describes the development and validation of multi-dimensional tacit knowledge sharing behavior scale.

Herein, two analytical techniques, namely, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis have been used to derive the composition of the constructs.

The study proposes four-dimensional tacit knowledge sharing behavior scale for services which include voluntarily tacit knowledge donation, involuntary tacit knowledge collection, involuntarily tacit knowledge collection and voluntary tacit knowledge collection.

A more holistic approach to the tacit knowledge sharing behavior construct has been proposed, which is helpful in contributing to the literature of tacit knowledge sharing behavior of employees. Additionally, it has made an attempt to eliminate the gap as voiced by most of the literature related to tacit knowledge sharing in service industries which has focused upon western service sectors and limited research is available in the Asian context.

The ingenuity of the scale lies in the fact that it measures voluntary and involuntary aspects of tacit knowledge sharing behavior of employees which can be used by the organization to develop knowledge management plans and knowledge sharing practices based on the identified strategies.

The study is one of its kind that has considered various aspects namely, knowledge donation, knowledge collection, voluntary knowledge sharing and involuntary knowledge sharing together.

This paper aims to provide empirical evidence to support the relationship between interorganizational knowledge sharing, absorptive capacity and organizational performance, and proposes that interorganizational knowledge sharing is composed of two processes: knowledge donation and collection.

A quantitative methodology is adopted to examine the proposed relationship between interorganizational knowledge sharing, absorptive capacity and organizational performance. The study uses survey data from 269 companies in Brazil. Structural equation modeling is applied to test the stated hypotheses and the model.

The empirical findings indicate that interorganizational knowledge sharing is composed of the donation and collection of knowledge. Interorganizational knowledge collection is found to have a positive effect on interorganizational knowledge donation, while collection is found to have a positive effect, mediated by absorptive capacity, on organizational performance.

One limitation of this research was the predominant participation of smaller companies. Another is that the data were only collected from Brazilian companies. Moreover, an instrument to measure these constructs was proposed and validated to enable future research to be conducted into the process of interorganizational knowledge sharing and its components: knowledge donation and knowledge collection.

Managers can enhance organizational performance by developing both the donation and collection of knowledge. Knowledge donation is particularly important because, in addition to its impact on absorptive capacity and organizational performance, it contributes to the development of knowledge collection, which is also indirectly related to performance.

The donation and collection of knowledge were validated as components of the interorganizational knowledge-sharing process, and the relationship between these processes and organizational performance is mediated by the absorptive capacity of the organization.

This study aims to resolve contradictions in the literature regarding the relationship between knowledge sharing (KS) and absorptive capacity (AC). The authors analyze the reasons for which KS has been interpreted as an antecedent and those for which it has been seen as a consequent of AC.

The study uses a systematic review of the literature to identify the arguments supporting the relationships between the constructs and propose a model. Additionally, the hypotheses were tested using SEM to assess the proposed model.

The findings reveal the nature of the relationship between KS and AC. Suggesting AC is bi-dimensional, consisting of potential AC and realized AC, while the relationship between these two dimensions depends on KS.

This study provides consistent theoretical grounds for future empirical research. The study findings demonstrate KS provides a real contribution towards AC, validating the previous literature on the impact of KS antecedents on realized AC. Additionally, the authors provide evidence to suggest knowledge donation is an output of the AC process, thus generating a debate on the nature of knowledge donation (requested vs unrequested), which raises interesting research questions to be addressed in the future. As a limitation, empirical data was only collected in the context of software development in two countries.

The results elucidate the central role of knowledge collection within AC. For managers, the importance of the role of knowledge collection to fully benefit from AC and exploit knowledge is highlighted.

The research design is original in that it combines a systematic and integrative literature review to the ground and propose hypotheses with empirically testing of the emerging model. The study clarifies the relationship between KS and AC, providing evidence to show knowledge donation is an output of the AC process. The benefits of this study can be seen at the team and firm-level.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between knowledge acquisition, knowledge absorptive capacity, and innovation performance in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Questionnaire data were collected from research and development (R&D) managers or owners of 49 SMEs of the bicycle industry in Taiwan. The questionnaire was designed to measure variables including: knowledge absorptive capacity, knowledge acquisition of company, technical and industrial experiences of owner's and the R&D staff, innovation performance measures, and control variables.

The results show that the depth and the breadth of its owner's technical and industrial experiences best explained absorptive capacity of an SME. In turn, the absorptive capacity and the knowledge acquisition activities of an SME affect its innovation performance.

The findings show that, first, SME owners' technical and industrial experiences are contributing factors to their companies' knowledge absorptive capacity; second, instead of R&D investment, SME personnel's scientific knowledge collection and diversity of knowledge sources contribute to innovation performance of companies. Because the data were limited to bicycle industry, future studies need to validate these findings in the SMEs of other industries.

The value of the paper lies in the fact that SME owner's and its personnel's contributions to company's knowledge absorptive capacity and the concomitant effects of knowledge acquisition and knowledge absorption capacity on a firm's innovation performance are two issues seldom addressed in previous studies.

High‐tech industries in Taiwan exist in an environment with diverse product requirements and intense cost reduction and information integration stress. They must develop new operational directions to increase industry competitiveness. Therefore, Taiwan’s high‐tech industries must continue R&D and creativity, establish knowledge sharing mechanisms and improve new product development (NPD) performance. This research analyzed and explored the influences of knowledge management (KM) and knowledge sharing mechanisms introduced by Taiwan’s high‐tech industries on new product development performance. The relationship between knowledge management capabilities and NPD performance is studied. This research considers the intervening industry and corporate position variables. Taiwan’s high‐tech industries have gradually entered the era of IT region integration and application with competitive advantage creation based upon core techniques. The in‐depth study of knowledge management and knowledge sharing introduced by the high‐tech industry revealed double meanings in academic and practical applications. The research results showed the following: (1) the stronger the knowledge management capabilities of Taiwan’s high‐tech industries, the more significant the NPD performance. (2) The better the knowledge sharing mechanism in Taiwan’s high‐tech industries, the more significant the NPD performance. (3) Corporate scale is not necessarily the critical factor in NPD success and the influence of corporate scale on NPD performance did not show significant differences. (4) The stronger the degree of leading corporate techniques, the more significant the NPD performance.

This study aims to explore the interaction among individual factors (enjoyment in helping others and knowledge self-efficacy), organizational factors (top management support and organizational rewards) and the use of information and communication technology factors as enablers of knowledge-sharing (KS) processes (knowledge donating and knowledge collecting) and firm innovation capability (IC) in a telecommunications company in an emerging market economy, namely, Bahrain.

The study used a mixed-methods case study approach. It used answers from 77 employees’ questionnaires and applied the partial least squares structural equation modeling method to test the research model. Several in-depth semidirective interviews were conducted with managers from different levels, functions and educational qualifications to address additional social, cultural, structural and strategic issues related to KS and IC.

The results indicated that enjoyment of helping others correlates with knowledge collection. Top management support had a substantial connection with knowledge donation, which had a robust positive relationship with firm IC. The interviews showed that moving toward a customer-centric strategy, policies, procedures and KS culture in a big organization with many business silos required tremendous effort and pain. People’s ability, willingness and readiness to share knowledge heavily depend on the corporate culture. Employee resistance to change posed a significant challenge.

Researchers have rarely used a case study or a mixed-methods case study approach to explore KS and IC. This study aims to fill this gap using a mixed-methods approach to examine KS enablers, processes and IC in a developing country’s social and cultural context, Bahrain. The work brings together new ways of looking at things and figuring out what they mean to understand knowledge transfer and IC in a telecommunications company. The company must incur changes and additions to its KS mechanisms to inspire innovation.

The objective of this study is to investigate the factors of two sub-processes – knowledge donating and knowledge collecting – of knowledge sharing in Hong Kong higher education context. This study examines the individual factors, organizational factors and technology factor of knowledge sharing. Individual factors include enjoyment in helping others and knowledge self-efficacy while organizational factors refer to the top management support, organizational rewards and organizational culture. The use of technology system is proposed to be the technology factor.

Based on the literature review, this study develops a structural model representing the impact of six latent variables on knowledge donating and knowledge collecting processes Data from a questionnaire survey of 166 respondents from academics from Hong Kong higher education sector was used to analyze the model. PLS-SEM was adopted in this study.

The result of the data analysis suggests enjoyment in helping others has a positive impact on both knowledge donating and knowledge collecting. For organizational factors, a trust and collaborative culture enhance both the sub-processes. The technology factor only contributes to the knowledge donating process. Several practical implications are provided to high education leaders, for instance, by establishing a trust and collaborative environment, academics are more eager to donate and collect knowledge.

This paper provides insights for researchers to further understand how individual, organizational and technology factors affect two sub-processes of knowledge sharing. On the practical side, this study validated several critical factors to successful knowledge donation and knowledge collection.

This is an empirical study of knowledge management performance (KMP) at a university and the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between knowledge management process (KMPR), KMP and job performance (JP).

The data were collected using a questionnaire, as the instrument for the primary data collection, with total collected back responses of 207 from university lecturers who have actually participated. Structural equation modeling technique was used to fully analyze the data in order to determine what level of the relationship between knowledge management (KM) and JP existed.

The main findings were related to confirming the two main hypotheses of the research that were related to testing if there were relationships between the KMPR (represented by seven surrogate measures, namely, knowledge identification, knowledge creation, knowledge collection, knowledge organizing, knowledge storage, knowledge dissemination and knowledge application) and KMP, as well as if the KMP was related to the JP.

This paper focuses on investigating the actual role of KM at a university, which is assumingly a knowledge factory. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that presumes the importance of KM and specially when there is no proper KM regiment in place, the paper reports the limited influence KM has on staff JP. It is one of the few studies that fills the gap in the literature concerned with the relationship between KM and JP and perhaps the first to provide insights about the KM intricacies at a Jordanian University.

The purpose of this study is to get an understanding regarding the clusters of middle management employees on the basis of their knowledge sharing behaviour. Designing knowledge sharing behaviors with a distinct focus for a specified group of employees can be an effective and productive one. As it is often argued that the cluster of employees labeled as “middle management” is the key player for knowledge sharing behaviors – a subject of this study that intends to contribute to management strategy to enhance organizational effectiveness and subsequently to its knowledge sharing phenomona.

Cluster analysis was adopted as key tool as a part of quantitative method to accumulate the data from 597 employees who are working within the middle management of service sector located in the union territory of India named Jammu and Kashmir.

Three distinct segments namely – “knowledge sharing adepts (KSA),” “knowledge sharing scrupulous (KSC)” and “knowledge sharing servitudes (KSE)” as the prime domains of knowledge sharing behavior are identified.

To draw a narrow focus, the study was limited to the service sector of a union territory in India, hence the findings may not be generalized. Furthermore, as knowledge sharing behavior of individuals is always evolved out of social and historical practices, findings of this cross-sectional study should ideally be needed to be updated time to time through further research.

Cluster dynamicism of knowledge sharing behavior based on the differentiated and specified group of employee functions distinctly which in turn increases the organizational productivity with a particular focus on the mid-management of the service sector – a key managerial implication of this study.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research paper is the first of its kind in Jammu and Kashmir adding value to the international literature in the area of knowledge sharing behaviors of service sector.