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1 – 10 of over 12000Xuening Duan, Yu Chang, Wei Huang and Md Moynul Hasan
A shared cognitive schema is the fundamental source of tacit understanding within a team. This study aims to address how such a shared cognitive schema emerges and evolves in an…
Abstract
Purpose
A shared cognitive schema is the fundamental source of tacit understanding within a team. This study aims to address how such a shared cognitive schema emerges and evolves in an interdisciplinary research team.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses an exploratory single case study to analyze the emergence and evolution of a shared cognitive schema in an interdisciplinary research team systematically. The authors spent more than two years collecting data from the IAM team via semistructured interviews, archival data and observation. Subsequently, a framework for the resulting mechanism model was developed by analyzing the data using a three-step process.
Findings
This study shows that as the interdisciplinary research team develops, the shared cognitive schema passes through three stages: overlapping cognitive schema, complementary cognitive schema and synergetic cognitive schema. The mechanisms of overlap, complement and synergy play important roles. The convergent roles of partner-based recruiting, knowledge categorization and following the existing institution facilitate the overlapping of knowledge structures. Complementary cognitive schema sharing is facilitated by interdisciplinary member selection, knowledge stock expansion and the effects of accomplished mentors. The synergetic behaviors of group voice, interactive cognition and adaptive learning facilitate synergetic cognitive schema sharing.
Originality/value
This study is the first to discuss the emergence and evolution of a shared cognitive schema at the microlevel of knowledge structure and belief structure. It offers a new theoretical perspective on the development rules of scientific research teams and provides practical enlightenment regarding the establishment and operation of interdisciplinary research teams.
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Applying social commitments theory, this paper aims to study the effect of shared responsibility as a structural characteristic of project teams to foster tacit knowledge sharing…
Abstract
Purpose
Applying social commitments theory, this paper aims to study the effect of shared responsibility as a structural characteristic of project teams to foster tacit knowledge sharing with the mediating role of affective bonding. Besides, the moderating effect of normative conformity is also examined.
Design/methodology/approach
The quantitative method was applied through surveying senior auditors representing 263 audit teams in Vietnam to examine the model.
Findings
This study found that in the joint projects, when team members perceive high shared responsibility for both success and failure, the affective bonding among them are generated. The affective bonding becomes salient to tacit knowledge sharing only when the team members perceive high obligations to conform the general knowledge sharing norms and the serial reciprocity norms.
Originality/value
This study provides the evidence for partial confirmation and expansion of the social commitments theory. The practical takeaways are provided for managers of project-based organizations in the social aspects for facilitating sharing culture.
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Bas Reus, Christine Moser and Peter Groenewegen
The purpose of this study is to show that an important antecedent of perceived knowledge quality is an employee’s position in the organizational network due to their participation…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to show that an important antecedent of perceived knowledge quality is an employee’s position in the organizational network due to their participation in different interest groups. In particular, this study theorizes that brokers establish a network of groups, which increases perceived knowledge quality vis-a-vis the social capital that employees draw on.
Design/methodology/approach
To test this study’s hypotheses on the influence of the structural position of knowledge brokers on the positive effects of social capital on perceived knowledge quality, this study combines data from an online survey with longitudinal archival data from a youth-care organization who used an enterprise social network (ESN) for knowledge sharing.
Findings
This study found a mitigating effect of being a broker on the relationship between trust and perceived knowledge quality, and also between inter-team interaction and perceived knowledge quality for lower levels of both trust and inter-team interaction on perceived knowledge quality.
Research limitations/implications
Although the hypotheses are supported, in light of prior research, the authors would have expected stronger and positive effects.
Practical implications
This research is particularly interesting because it emphasizes the important role of social capital. For organizations that deal with trust issues, it might help to stimulate employees to broaden their activity on ESNs by becoming active in multiple groups.
Originality/value
While knowledge sharing on ESNs is generally conducive for creating organizational value, there is a lack of understanding of what drives employees’ perception of the quality of shared knowledge, and how this perception may depend on their position in the social network. To investigate this question, the authors turn to social capital theory.
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The purpose of this study is to gain insight into the dynamics and considerations of professionals regarding the sharing of tacit, personal knowledge in their practice.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to gain insight into the dynamics and considerations of professionals regarding the sharing of tacit, personal knowledge in their practice.
Design/methodology/approach
Adopting a social-constructivist ontology, the qualitative design deploys semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Data were coded, and analysed through interrelating and reasoning.
Findings
Personal knowledge is difficult to share precisely, but can be shared to some extent using reflection and stories. Knowledge also provides a position and professional agency, emphasising boundaries and impacting the decisions on interaction and sharing. As such, professional commitment is vulnerable and contextual and, by extension, material becomes part of this interplay of professional practice and collaborative development.
Research limitations/implications
Findings imply that exchange and use of knowledge and material present in organisations are impacted by individual professionals’ autonomy and decisions, which consequently impact on employees’ practice. This calls for research that focuses on individual factors such as autonomy, professionalism and attitudes in addition to organisational and facilitative matters.
Practical implications
Stimulating professional commitment and interpersonal learning is a matter of valuing personal knowledge and practice to avoid protectionism, boundaries and segregated agency. Management and professionals should consider how and why individuals exchange their personal knowledge, paying attention to social structures and individuals’ voices and objectives in forming communities.
Originality/value
This study combines the concept of tacit knowledge with the younger field of practice theory. By connecting personal knowledge to practice, it extends agency to the material world and offers a more individual perspective to knowledge sharing in and between entities.
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Yueh-Min Huang, Ding-Chau Wang, Ho-Yuan Hsieh and Yong-Ming Huang
The purpose of this paper is to investigate what factors can affect individuals’ knowledge sharing on social media from the perspectives of personality traits and social capital.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate what factors can affect individuals’ knowledge sharing on social media from the perspectives of personality traits and social capital.
Design/methodology/approach
A theoretical model was developed with reference to the personality traits theory and the social capital theory. Accordingly, a questionnaire was designed to collect the individuals’ ideas on knowledge sharing on social media and further test the model. The questionnaire was then distributed to two LINE groups. Finally, the collected data were analyzed using the partial least squares (PLS) approach.
Findings
Personality traits not only directly affect knowledge sharing, but also indirectly influence it via social capital. Of all personality traits, agreeableness, openness and extraversion directly and indirectly influence knowledge sharing.
Research limitations/implications
Knowledge sharing is undertaken by individuals and social groups. It starts with individuals and then diffuses to other members of a group.
Practical implications
Group managers have to identify the members who are friendly, open-minded or extroverted and encourage them to act as the bellwethers for knowledge sharing under an effective regulatory regime, through which intra-group knowledge sharing can be promoted.
Originality/value
This study introduces a new model to explore knowledge sharing on social media from individual and social perspectives. It illustrates what will affect individuals’ knowledge sharing on social media.
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Michelle McLeod, David Roger Vaughan, Jonathan Edwards and Miguel Moital
The purpose of this paper is to examine the information flows, in terms of content and process, underpinning the sharing of knowledge by managers and owners. Such an examination…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the information flows, in terms of content and process, underpinning the sharing of knowledge by managers and owners. Such an examination reveals similarities and differences that will influence the generation and dissemination of knowledge used in tourism business operations and contribute to innovation.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper examines information flows within the theoretical and methodological framework of social network analysis. The findings were derived from a quantitative study of tourism managers and owners of a tourism hub in South-West England.
Findings
The main finding was that network structure characteristics determine the flow of information within owners’ and managers’ social networks. The owners of smaller businesses received information from several sources and, therefore, had fewer structural constraints and reported larger structural holes. In comparison, the managers had more brokerage opportunities to disseminate the information within their social networks.
Research limitations/implications
This paper highlights knowledge sharing between tourism business managers and owners in an open network structure. First, an open network structure builds innovation through the provision of nonredundant information. This is determined through the effective size of structural holes and the dissemination of information through brokerage roles. Second, the knowledge capability of a destination is built up through the social networking of managers and owners. The generation and dissemination of knowledge in a tourism destination are facilitated by the social networking activities of managers and owners.
Practical implications
Managers and owners of tourism businesses require knowledge through information to assist with innovative business practices. The practical implication of this is that the social networks of managers and owners have different network characteristics, and that these differences result in consequences for the innovation of business practices. Another practical implication relates to the importance of managers in knowledge dissemination based on having several brokerage roles in the tourism destination.
Originality/value
These findings are important because an understanding of social networks and the flow of information is one of the keys to determining the influences on knowledge sharing within tourism destination knowledge networks of owners or managers and their potential contributions to innovation.
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Silvia Massa, Maria Carmela Annosi, Lucia Marchegiani and Antonio Messeni Petruzzelli
This study aims to focus on a key unanswered question about how digitalization and the knowledge processes it enables affect firms’ strategies in the international arena.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to focus on a key unanswered question about how digitalization and the knowledge processes it enables affect firms’ strategies in the international arena.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering over 20 years of research (from 2000 to 2023) and including 73 journal papers.
Findings
This review allows us to highlight a relationship between firms’ international strategies and the knowledge processes enabled by applying digital technologies. Specifically, the authors discuss the characteristics of patterns of knowledge flows and knowledge processes (their origin, the type of knowledge they carry on and their directionality) as determinants for the emergence of diverse international strategies embraced by single firms or by populations of firms within ecosystems, networks, global value chains or alliances.
Originality/value
Despite digital technologies constituting important antecedents and critical factors for the internationalization process, and international businesses in general, and operating cross borders implies the enactment of highly knowledge-intensive processes, current literature still fails to provide a holistic picture of how firms strategically use what they know and seek out what they do not know in the international environment, using the affordances of digital technologies.
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Niklas Wiesweg, Philipp Schäpers, Torben Bernhold and Timo Hartmann
To take full advantage of new technologies (e.g. machine learning), a consistent and more comprehensive knowledge sharing across organisational boundaries is required. The real…
Abstract
Purpose
To take full advantage of new technologies (e.g. machine learning), a consistent and more comprehensive knowledge sharing across organisational boundaries is required. The real estate industry often faces this challenge as well. The paper aims to approach this circumstance by analysing the real estate supply chain (RESC) and aims to identify ways to achieve a more disruption-free flow of information.
Design/methodology/approach
To answer the research question, a cross-sectional study was conducted using a standardised online questionnaire and structural equation modelling. The majority of the study participants came from German-speaking countries. The structural equation model was used to examine the relationships between the factors inter-organisational relationship, knowledge sharing skills and knowledge sharing.
Findings
The authors found that inter-organisational relationship has a significant influence on knowledge sharing and thus on the occurrence of information flow disruptions. Aligning shared goals of parties plays a major role to improve inter-organisational relationship. Control and supervision does not show any significant effect. Knowledge sharing skills in turn have an influence on knowledge sharing.
Practical implications
The alignment of interests and the creation of trust should be established in the future as core elements within the framework of contract negotiations, the lived contract and the contract itself, in order to reduce disruptions in the flow of information.
Originality/value
From the perspective of knowledge sharing, this study attempts to identify necessities within the framework of contractual design options that simplify and promote the inter-organisational use of algorithms to increase transactional efficiency.
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Arpana Kumari and Prachi Aggarwal
The COVID-19 pandemic brought uncertain working patterns in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world wherein unleashing power of knowledge became prototypical for…
Abstract
Purpose
The COVID-19 pandemic brought uncertain working patterns in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world wherein unleashing power of knowledge became prototypical for real-time decision-making capacity of organizational workforce. Drawing from Vroom’s expectancy theory, this study aims to investigate whether shared leadership (SL) mediates the impact of perceived fairness of rewards (PFR) on knowledge capitalization (KC).
Design/methodology/approach
A survey of 484 employees in the Indian real estate industry was completed in two phases. Confirmatory factor analysis and structured equation model were applied for analysis and hypothesis testing.
Findings
PFR positively affected employee’s KC in Indian real estate industry. Also, SL partially mediated the effect of PFR on KC.
Practical implications
This study indicates the positive impact of PFR on employees’ KC and demonstrates position of SL for boosting its occurrence in organizations.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to investigate the mediating role of SL between relationship of PFR and KC of employees.
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Qiong Wu, Qiwei Zhou and Kathryn Cormican
Shared leadership is an effective mechanism for managing project teams. Its performance-enhancing benefits have been demonstrated in many studies. Nonetheless, there is an obvious…
Abstract
Purpose
Shared leadership is an effective mechanism for managing project teams. Its performance-enhancing benefits have been demonstrated in many studies. Nonetheless, there is an obvious silence about how to promote shared leadership in Lean Six Sigma (LSS) project teams. To address this deficit, the purposes of this study are to investigate the influence of shared leadership on LSS project success and to explore how team psychological safety, project task complexity and project task interdependence influence shared leadership.
Design/methodology/approach
A multi-source, time-lagged survey design with a four-month interval was conducted. To do this, the authors collected data from 71 project teams (comprising 71 project managers and 352 project members) using LSS approaches in the manufacturing and service industries.
Findings
The findings show that shared leadership positively influences LSS project success. The authors also found that team psychological safety fosters the development of shared leadership and, more importantly, these effects are stronger when the tasks are more complex and more interdependent.
Practical implications
These findings advance our understanding of the factors that enable shared leadership and equip LSS project managers with practical techniques to improve shared leadership for the success of their projects.
Originality/value
This study extends the theory of shared leadership to the context of LSS project management and is among the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to theoretically propose and empirically validate how to promote shared leadership in LSS project teams.
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