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This paper aims to examine how knowledge sharing behavior is influenced by three sets of dynamics: a rational calculus that weighs the costs and benefits of sharing; a dispositional preference that favors certain patterns of sharing outcomes; and a relational effect based on working relationships.

Concepts from social exchange theory, social value orientation, and leader‐member exchange theory are applied to analyze behavioral intentions to share knowledge. The study population consists of employees of a large pension fund in Canada. Participants answered a survey that used allocation games and situational vignettes to measure social value orientation, propensity to share knowledge, and perception of cost and benefit.

The results suggest that personal preferences about the distribution of sharing outcomes, individual perceptions about costs and benefits, and structural relationship with knowledge recipients, all affect knowledge sharing behavior significantly. Notably, it was found that propensity to share knowledge is positively related to perceived benefit to the recipient, thus suggesting that evaluation of cost and benefit in social exchange is not limited to self‐interest, but is also influenced by perceived recipient benefit. Moreover, it was found that the relationship with the sharing target (superior or colleague) also influenced sharing.

Most studies emphasize the organizational benefits of knowledge sharing. This study examines knowledge sharing from the perspective of the individual who approaches knowledge sharing as a social exchange that involves perceptions of costs and benefits, preferences about sharing outcomes, and relationship with the sharing target. The study also introduces innovative methods to measure social value orientation and propensity to share knowledge.

This paper aims to explore participants’ perceived benefits and costs that influence the quantity and the quality of voluntary participation in knowledge networks in a resources-constrained economy.

A conceptual model of perceived benefits and costs of knowledge sharing is designed on the basis of literature. The influence of perceived benefit and cost on perceived quantity and quality of knowledge sharing are assessed on the basis of a survey with 283 participants in a business context within a resource-restrained economy.

The results indicate that reputation, reciprocity and altruism are perceived to benefit quantity of participation, whereas reciprocity, altruism and knowledge self-efficacy are perceived to benefit the quality of participation in knowledge networks. Effort and time have a negative impact on both quantity and quality of participation in knowledge sharing.

This study provides insights into the factors that influence acceptance and use of knowledge networks and can thus influence business policies.

This exploratory study explores both perceived benefits and costs of participation in knowledge sharing in a resource-constrained economy.

This paper's aim is to examine the influence of perceived cost of sharing knowledge and affective trust in colleagues on the relationship between affective commitment and knowledge sharing.

The methodology used was a survey of 496 employees from 15 organizations across ten industries.

Affective trust in colleagues moderates the relationship between affective commitment and knowledge sharing and the relationship between cost of knowledge sharing and knowledge sharing.

Future researchers should operationalize the perceived cost of knowledge sharing construct to include other potential group barriers; for instance, politics and organizational barriers, management commitment and lack of trust.

The findings of this study suggest that employees who value social relationships and social resources tend to view knowledge as a collectively owned commodity. As such, their knowledge sharing behavior reflects the model of reciprocal social exchanges.

The results of this study indicate that an organizational culture that encourages affect‐based trust between colleagues will facilitate knowledge sharing.

The paper bridges the gap between the literature on knowledge sharing, perceived cost of knowledge sharing, affective organizational commitment and trust in a single model.

Online health communities (OHCs) have become increasingly popular sources of health information in recent years. However, little is known about the factors that affect the relationship commitment and continuous knowledge sharing intention among OHC members. Thus, this study aims to integrate social exchange and commitment-trust theories to establish a theoretical model to fill the gap.

A research model that integrates social exchange theory and commitment-trust theory is developed. Quantitative data from 519 valid questionnaires are collected via an offline survey. Statistical product and service solutions 20.0 and analysis of a moment structures 20.0 software are used to test the hypotheses.

Relationship commitment directly influences continuous knowledge sharing intention, partially mediates the relationship between social support and continuous knowledge sharing intention, and fully mediates the relationship between perceived health risks and continuous knowledge sharing intention. Informational and emotional supports are identified as benefit factors that positively affect relationship commitment and perceived health risks are regarded as cost factors that negatively influence relationship commitment. Informational and emotional supports of OHC members produce different effects on relationship commitment when members obtain social support from different sources. Moreover, trust moderates the influences of informational support and perceived health risks on relationship commitment.

The findings provide additional insights that can augment the knowledge management literature by indicating how people are driven to share knowledge continuously in the context of OHCs. This study empirically clarifies the relationships of benefits (i.e. social support) and costs (i.e. perceived health risks) to continuous knowledge sharing intention by demonstrating the significant mediating effect of relationship commitment. In addition, the findings of this study highlight the importance of the social support source in OHCs and provide additional insights into commitment–trust theory by integrating the moderating effect of trust on the relationships between relationship commitment and its antecedents.

This study aims to take a public goods approach to understand relationships between collecting and contributing knowledge to an online knowledge sharing portal (KSP), mental model processing and outcomes at the individual and collective levels.

This study reports on a survey (N = 602) among tax professionals, examining the perceived individual and collective benefits and costs associated with collecting and contributing knowledge. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

Collecting and contributing knowledge led to considerable mental model processing of the knowledge. That in turn significantly influenced (primarily) individual and (some) collective costs and benefits. Results varied by the kinds of knowledge sharing. Whether directly from knowledge sharing, or mediated through mental modeling, the perceived costs and benefits may be internalized as an individual good rather than being interpreted at the collective level as a public good.

The study is situated in the early stages of a wiki-type online KSP. A focus on the learning potential of the system could serve to draw in new users and contributors, heightening perceptions of the public goods dimension of a KSP.

A focus on the learning potential of the system could serve to draw in new users, and thus the number of subsequent contributors, heightening perceptions of the collective, public goods dimension of a KSP.

This study explores how knowledge sharing and mental model processing are directly and indirectly associated with individual and collective costs and benefits. As online knowledge sharing is both an individual and public good, costs and benefits must be considered from both perspectives.

Managing tacit knowledge effectively and efficiently is a huge challenge for organizations. Based on the social exchange and self-determination theories, this study aims to explore the role of social interactions in motivating employees' willingness to share tacit knowledge (WSTK).

The study used a survey approach and collected data from 228 employees in service and manufacturing organizations.

Interactional justice and respectful engagement are positively related to WSTK. The perceived cost of tacit knowledge sharing (CostTKS) partially mediates the relationship between interactional justice and WSTK. Respectful engagement moderates the negative relationship between interactional justice and the perceived CostTKS.

The study advances the understanding of the role of social interaction in facilitating employee WSTK by integrating the direct and intermediate relationships involving the effect of supervisor's interactional justice and peers' respectful engagement and employee perceived CostTKS on WSTK.

The findings have important practical implications for organizations as these suggest how organizations can help tacit knowledge holders experience less negative and more supportive behaviors when they engage in voluntary TKS.

This study examines the effect of both vertical and horizontal work-related interactions on perceived CostTKS and sequentially on WSTK, thereby extending existing literature.

The purpose of this paper is using competing hypotheses (a spillover hypothesis, based on Engagement Theory, and a provisioning hypothesis, based on Adaptive Cost Theory) to help explain why employees become disengaged from knowledge sharing.

Employed knowledge workers completed an online questionnaire regarding their job characteristics, their general health and wellness, perceived organizational support, job engagement and disengagement from knowledge sharing.

The findings provide empirical support for Adaptive Cost Theory and illustrate the relationship between Engagement Theory and the Disengagement from Knowledge Sharing. In particular, this research illustrates the importance of health and wellness for preventing disengagement from knowledge sharing. In addition, the findings introduce a new finding of tensions between job engagement and knowledge sharing, which supports knowledge workers’ complaints of “being too busy” to share.

This study uses cross-sectional methodology; however, the participants are employed and in the field. Given the theoretical arguments that disengagement from knowledge sharing should be either short term or transient, future research should follow-up with diary methods to capture this to confirm the study’s conclusions.

The findings of this study provide some insight for practitioners on how to prevent disengagement from knowledge sharing. New predictors and an interesting tension between job engagement and knowledge sharing are identified.

This study examines an alternative explanation for the lack of knowledge sharing in organizations, and uses competing theories to identify the reasons for the disengagement from knowledge sharing.

An increasing number of users join and become immersed in WeChat official accounts, but many users quit using these services as well. Nevertheless, most of the previous studies mainly focussed on the usage behavior. The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap by examining factors affecting users’ unfollow intentions for WeChat subscriptions in a Chinese context.

Structural equation modeling is used in our study. A field survey with 260 WeChat users is conducted to test the research model and hypotheses.

The results show the following interesting key findings: first, the effect of actual cost on users’ unfollow intentions is larger than the effect of opportunity cost; second, users’ unfollow intentions will decrease with the increase of users’ perceptions of information usefulness; third, the results of the control variables showed that only landing frequency has a negative effect on users’ unfollow intentions; and fourth, users’ demographic differences are also examined in regard to how they may affect users’ unfollow intentions.

First, this paper studies factors influencing users’ unfollow intentions for WeChat subscriptions from a social exchange theory perspective; the authors considered both extraneous factors and users’ internal perception factors potentially affecting users’ unfollow intentions, which has rarely been researched. Furthermore, the authors examined significant differences among users’ demographic characteristics in affecting users’ unfollow intentions. The results of the study provide a more comprehensive understanding of the influencing factors of users’ unfollow intentions.

This paper aims to understand the factors that can determine the knowledge sharing (KS) intention and behaviour of academics in Malaysian higher learning institutes (HLIs), thus affecting academics research productivity.

The study’s respondents were 525 academics from public and private HLI in Malaysia. This study adapts theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and social capital theory (SCT) to determine academics KS intention and behaviour of academics and the factors that can influence along the KS process.

Results indicate that among the factors of academics KS behaviour, there are two factors that are not significant, commitment and perceived cost, while the rest showed significant results. The strongest factors are management support and social media use among academics. The result also shows that academics intention to share is explained by 62.1 per cent of the variance, while academics KS behaviour is explained by 47.1 per cent of the variance.

This study shows the high intention and behaviour of sharing among Malaysian academics and suggests that academics in this country are cautious and aware of the importance of knowledge for human capital and development of nation.

This paper facilitates university in hiring academics that support KS activities.

The integration of TPB and SCT in evaluating Malaysian academics KS behaviour can eventually affect the research productivity. Furthermore, addition of several variables, such as perceived cost, facilitating conditions make this study a holistic model to predict academic research performance.