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The authors focus on how intra-organizational proximity influences the frequency of knowledge transfer in dyads, and the authors seek to balance the over-socialized and under-socialized perspectives of knowledge sharing by focusing on how proximity both indirectly (mediated by social relationships) and directly influences the frequency of knowledge sharing. Empirically, the authors analyze how proximity in a five-story building directly and indirectly influences the frequency of knowledge sharing.

As the authors were interested in exploring the frequency of knowledge sharing among individuals in knowledge sharing dyads, they used a survey to approach individuals directly and obtain information on the frequency of their knowledge sharing. The authors have complete data on 796 dyads on which they tested their hypotheses. Further, the physical distance in a dyad was measured as the walking distance (measured in meters) between individuals.

The authors first find that proximity positively affects the frequency of knowledge sharing indirectly through its promotion of social relationships. Second, it is noticeable that the direct relationship between proximity and knowledge sharing is stronger than the indirect via the promotion of social relationships. In sum, the authors’ results contribute to the knowledge sharing literature by emphasizing and clarifying how proximity both directly and indirectly influences knowledge sharing.

This study has some limitations. First, this study only measured the frequency of knowledge sharing among individuals. Neither individual nor organizational outcomes of knowledge sharing were considered. Second, the authors did not distinguish between different channels for knowledge sharing, such as face-to-face or face-to-interface.

One practical implication is that knowledge sharing spanning, for instance, 50 m compared to knowledge sharing spanning 30 m may not necessarily require more resources, as the negative effect of 30 and 50 m distances is almost similar, as the negative effect of distance starts to fade out at 30 m. Another practical implication for the direct effect of proximity on knowledge sharing is that to foster knowledge sharing organizational practices need to create opportunities for employees to span both horizontal and vertical distances.

The authors’ results contribute to the knowledge sharing literature by empirically emphasizing and clarifying how intra-organizational proximity both directly and indirectly influences knowledge sharing.

How companies can become better at knowing what they know, and share what they know have in recent years become dominant fields of research within knowledge management. The literature focuses on why people share knowledge, or why they fail to share knowledge, whilst the discussion of what they actually share has been pinned down to the concept of best practices. In this paper it is argued that there is more to knowledge sharing than the sharing of best practices. Knowledge sharing is more than the closing of performance gaps and the sharing of stocks of knowledge – knowledge sharing is also about bridging situations of organizational interdependencies and thereby supporting ongoing organizational activities.

The paper is both theoretical and empirical. Theoretically, the concept of organizational interdependence is applied to create a conceptual framework encompassing four types of knowledge to be shared. The theoretical framework is applied on a case company to empirically illustrate how knowledge sharing encompasses different types of knowledge.

The paper identifies four types of knowledge that are pivotal to share: professional knowledge, coordinating knowledge, object‐based knowledge, and know‐who. Hence, the paper expands the common belief that knowledge sharing is solely about sharing best practices.

Since knowledge sharing encompasses at least four types of knowledge, the practice of facilitating knowledge sharing must necessarily focus on different channels enabling the sharing of knowledge. The practical implications of the paper, hence, direct attention to not solely sharing best practices but also knowledge bridging organizational interdependencies.

The paper argues that best practices have dominated the discourse on what knowledge is to be shared but, to become better at understanding and practising knowledge sharing, states that one must expand one's view on what knowledge is being shared.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between knowledge management (KM) and employee empowerment in institutions of higher education.

The research method in this study was the descriptive-correlative type, and was based on the goal of the method applied. Subjects in this research included the staff members of higher educational institutions in Iran. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used. To analyse research data, descriptive statistics, and for inferential statistics, the Pearson correlation, the Friedman ranking test and stepwise regression, were used. For data analysis, SPSS software was used.

The results from the study show that all alternative hypotheses were confirmed and there was a significant relationship between KM and employee empowerment. In addition, KM predicted the aspects of employee empowerment in institutions of higher education.

Through this study, the positive role of KM in employee empowerment in institutions of higher education has been described, and the importance of considering such studies has been specified for researchers.

This paper aims to explore the requirements of organizational knowledge management initiatives using requirements engineering techniques, identifying the optimal techniques configuration and serving as a management tool for knowledge engineers.

The method is selection attributes. Knowledge management enablers are characterized and mapped with the coverage capabilities of requirements engineering techniques, using the attributes of the elicited object and a box-plot analysis. The information is gathered from 280 references, 32 companies and 16 experts in requirements engineering.

Requirements of organizational knowledge management initiatives are got optimally by combining interviews, use cases, scenarios, laddering and focus group techniques. The requirements of structure and processes are more complex to identify, while culture requirements are the best covered.

Knowledge management enablers are analyzed according to the current studies and comprehension of engineering techniques.

Knowledge engineers need to consider the coverage capabilities of engineering techniques to design an optimal requirement identification and meet the objectives of organizational knowledge acquisition initiatives. Requirement engineers can improve the requirements identification by a staged selection process.

The requirements of knowledge management initiatives that impact the community can be identified and traced to ensure the knowledge objectives. Requirements related to culture and people, like shared values, beliefs, and behaviors, are also considered.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study about formal requirement identification of knowledge management initiatives in the organizational context, providing the optimal configuration. A novel staged process is proposed for requirements engineering techniques selection, analyzing the enablers at component level and identifying the attributes associated with the elicited object.

This paper aims to consider the role and influence of social capital (SC) on knowledge management (KM) and sets out to develop an understanding of the importance of the impact of the cross-cultural environment on this relationship.

According to the notion, in this study, the relationship between two essential aspects in management and business, SC on KM practices, has been analyzed. By applying a descriptive and correlational method, the impact of various dimensions of SC on KM in a cross-cultural setting has been investigated, and required data has been obtained through questionnaires consist of 30 items, which is prepared for a sample of 232 people.

Although the findings are varied, the results indicated that there is an important relationship between SC dimensions and KM in the research environment, which is cross-cultural.

First, as the data derived from different branches of a big company in Iran, its results cannot be easily extended to other contexts. Therefore, future streams of research can expand the scope of this paper into other contexts with different characteristics. Moreover, the sample of this paper is taken from different communities (branches) which increase the variety of personality features in distinct cultures. Thus, further research can stress a particular organization/ branch to avoid the problem of cultural variation and focus on a more homogenous sample. Finally, this study targeted a big organization in the IT sector. However, future studies can investigate another type of firm (e.g. small and medium firms) in different sectors (e.g. manufacturing, food sector, etc.).

In this research, using scientific and practical methods, the impacts have been examined carefully and deliberately to assist the managers of organizations in theoretically and managerially as these outcomes contribute to the development of a new concept called cross-cultural in knowledge management and social capital, and support organizations to cope with the implications of this concept.

There is not much empirical research on cross-cultural settings and its effects on management, finance and business, especially on correlations between KM and SC. This investigation tries to fill this gap and explain the ways, which companies can use SC for enhancing their effectiveness of KM by considering culture diversity impacts.