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The current article investigates the impact of generational diversity on knowledge sharing and group performance. It, further, explores the moderating effects of intergenerational climate, boundary-spanning leadership, and respect in facilitating greater knowledge sharing and enhanced group performance.

The authors applied partial least square structural equation modeling to test the model, using a sample of 635 employees working in the banking industry.

Results indicate that generational diversity negatively influences knowledge sharing among employees at work. However, the moderating roles of intergenerational climate and boundary-spanning leadership aid in mitigating this negative affect and facilitate knowledge sharing among employees, thereby, resulting in better group performance.

The study extends extant literature on generational diversity and differences by examining its impact on knowledge sharing and group performance. Further, the study also contributes by highlighting intergenerational climate and boundary-spanning leadership as key facilitators in promoting knowledge sharing among employees. Future research may include other industries/contexts to widen the generalizability of the findings and a longitudinal design to ascertain the causal effects.

This study identifies the need to effectively manage multigenerational workforce to capitalize on the unique benefits of each generation. An intergenerational climate free from ageist attitudes and employing leaders possessing boundary-spanning abilities would help organizations to create an inclusive workplace.

The authors attempt to explore the relationship between generational diversity, knowledge sharing, and group performance through the moderating effects of intergenerational climate and boundary-spanning leadership, which has not been studied in the past.

This study aims to examine the effect of faultline based on job responsibility and their interaction with the incentive scheme on knowledge-sharing behavior.

This research is an experimental study with a 2 × 2 factorial design between subjects. Faultline and incentive schemes are manipulated into two groups (strong faultline–weak faultline and group incentive–individual incentives). This study involved 89 undergraduate accounting students as participants.

This research shows that a strong faultline created a strong social identity effect. Hence, the knowledge-sharing behavior among group members tends to be lower than the weak faultline. Knowledge-sharing behavior tends to be higher in group incentive schemes than individual ones. However, there is no support for interactions between incentive schemes and faultline effects on knowledge-sharing behavior. The results indicate that forming a working subgroup based on informational characteristics attributes reduces cooperative behavior and knowledge sharing between groups.

This study adds a new addition to faultline literature by examining the effect of faultline and incentive schemes on knowledge-sharing behavior based on informational characteristics attributes. Previous research on faultline and knowledge sharing was limited and primarily focused on faultlines created by demographic attributes. This study also enriches faultline literature on knowledge-sharing behavior using an experimental design.

Knowledge sharing usually happens in a work group context, but it is rarely know how group leaders influence their members’ knowledge-sharing performance. Based on social exchange theory (SET) and the perspective of positive organizational behavior (POB), this study aims to argue that a group leader’s positive leadership (e.g. empowering leadership) can help group members develop positive psychological capital which can increase their knowledge sharing.

The authors conduct a multilevel analysis to explore the interrelationship among empowering leadership, psychological capital and knowledge sharing. The sample includes 64 work groups consisting of 537 group members, and empirical testing is carried out by hierarchical linear modeling.

The results show that empowering leadership in a work group has a direct cross-level impact on members’ knowledge sharing and that psychological capital partially mediates the relationship between empowering leadership and knowledge sharing. As a result, this study shows that group leaders with positive leadership can help their members develop better positive psychological resources, which should lead to better knowledge sharing.

Based on the multilevel perspective and SET, this is the first study to explore how group leaders’ empowering leadership influences members’knowledge sharing. Depending on integrating the POB perspective into SET, this study is also the first one that connects two emerging and important research issues – POB and knowledge sharing.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of cognition on knowledge sharing between members of the acquiring and acquired organisations in the post-acquisition integration process. It specifically analyses differentiation between in-groups and out-groups, the perception of organisational identity and interaction among members of the acquired and acquiring organisations and how these three factors affect knowledge sharing.

The authors develop theoretical propositions and conduct an explorative pilot study on the basis of original interview data conducted with ten respondents in four Indian IT companies that have acquired firms abroad.

The authors find evidence for supporting the negative effect of in- and out-groups differentiation and the positive effect of interpersonal interaction on knowledge sharing among employees of the acquired and acquiring organisations. There was indicative, but less compelling, evidence for the negative influence of inter-group competition and the positive influence of perceived shared organisational identity on knowledge sharing. Different from the established view, the authors find that when Indian firms acquire firms abroad, they immediately initiate knowledge flows from the targets rather than going through a long period of integration prior to acquiring knowledge from the targets.

The paper contributes to the scholarly conversation on cognition and knowledge sharing and argues that firms that are located in developing economies and that acquire firms abroad behave in a way somewhat different from what Western literature postulates. This invites for further studies, both theoretical and empirical, to shed light on this phenomenon. The present paper is focused only on one country, India, and on a single industry, the IT industry. It is limited in its empirical part, mainly due to enormous difficulties in getting access to the field.

The study demonstrates how central individuals are to the process of knowledge sharing and the accomplishment of organisational objectives in a post-acquisition context. Managers should understand that the knowledge their employees possess is a strategic asset, and therefore how they use it is influential in attaining organisational goals in general, and acquisition integration objectives in particular. The creation of task- and project-related communities or groups can help in establishing a shared organisational identity, especially after the turbulent event of one company acquiring another one. The creation of communities or groups where socialisation is encouraged can lead to employees interacting with one another and developing a sense of belongingness with the community or group. Over time, this belongingness can translate into a shared organisational identity, which is beneficial for the organisation. The findings suggest that the creation of task- or project-oriented communities and groups is a powerful way to achieve that.

The contribution of the paper is fourfold. First, while macro orientation dominates literature on the growth of the Indian IT industry, this study is conducted at the individual level of analysis, by focusing on managers in acquiring Indian IT firms. Second, whereas studies that have examined cognition and knowledge sharing have done so mainly through social capital lenses, this paper focuses on factors that are based on the inherent tendency of human beings to categorise themselves and other individuals. Third, the paper examines the links between cognition and knowledge sharing in an exciting context, namely, post-acquisition integration. Finally, while research on both post-acquisition integration and knowledge sharing is biased towards a Western context, this study investigates knowledge sharing and post-acquisition integration in the context of a major non-Western emerging economy.

This study presents a conceptual model of knowledge sharing in global organizations, examining the facilitating role of international experience through cognitive, relational and structural social capital perspectives.

This is a conceptual paper that applies multilevel thinking to the issue of knowledge sharing in global environments.

The presented conceptual model contributes to our understanding of the microfoundational role of international experience in facilitating knowledge sharing in global organizations by integrating individual, dyadic and group perspectives.

Managerial implications are discussed for how to strengthen individuals' propensities for knowledge sharing from international experience through strategic hiring, employee development, succession planning and expatriate mobility.

The presented framework explicitly considers the implications of individual heterogeneity in international experience for differences in organizational knowledge sharing capabilities, thereby contributing to the search for microfoundations of competitive advantage in global organizations.

Although the work group is the main context for knowledge exchange and combination in today’s organizations, few knowledge-sharing studies have been conducted at the group level. The purpose of this paper is to apply the concept of group social capital to determine how to promote knowledge sharing at the group level. The authors divided group social capital into two segments, conduits and resources, and argue that different group social capital conduits (i.e. work design in this study) lead to varied resources, which subsequently influence group knowledge sharing.

In this study, group social capital conduits included social interaction and task interdependence, and group social capital resources included group trust and a supportive climate for knowledge sharing. The authors conducted a survey on work groups in the high-tech industry using a sample of 86 work groups.

The results indicated that social interaction in a work group was positively related to group trust and that task interdependence was positively related to group trust and a supportive climate for knowledge sharing. Furthermore, group trust and a supportive climate for knowledge sharing were both found to have an influence on knowledge sharing.

Applying the concept of group social capital, this paper is the first research to discuss how group social capital conduits and resources influence knowledge sharing. The results of this study lead us to a better understand the relationship between group social capital and knowledge sharing.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how different types of contribution awareness information influence knowledge sharing motivation and contribution persistence.

The independent variable of this experimental study was contribution awareness information with four levels: self-contribution, absolute social-comparison, relative social-comparison and control. The dependent variables were self-rated knowledge sharing motivation measured on a six-point Likert scale and contribution persistence measured by number of contributions. A total of 182 knowledge workers voluntarily completed online participation. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four intervention groups.

The study found that the self-contribution group outperformed the other groups in both knowledge sharing motivation and contribution persistence; this observation was significant compared with the absolute social-comparison and control groups. The impact of self-contribution frequency information was stronger for contribution persistence than for self-evaluated knowledge sharing motivation, highlighting the gap between perception and behavior. It is also noteworthy that comparative information negatively influenced knowledge sharing motivation and contribution persistence, implying that social comparison played a role in priming individuals to focus on dissimilarities between the comparison target and themselves.

This study provides behavior-based evidence supporting social comparison theory and the selective accessibility model in the field of knowledge sharing outside of an organizational context. This study also offers the practical advice that participants’ knowledge sharing motivation and contribution persistence, especially newly joining members, can be increased by the inclusion of self-contribution information and conversely decreased by comparative information.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways to encourage members in QQ knowledge-communication groups to persistently share knowledge in terms of contexts and autonomous motivations.

Based on self-determination theory, three important contextual factors of QQ knowledge-communication groups were selected as exogenous variables and three typical autonomous motivations as mediating variables to construct a knowledge-sharing model. Internet questionnaire surveys and data collection were conducted to test proposed hypotheses by means of structural equation modeling with AMOS.

Reciprocity, learning, and altruism have significant positive influence on persistent sharing willingness, and the degree to which each factor influences persistent sharing willingness differs considerably. Autonomy support, perceived usefulness, and relatedness support have no significantly direct influence on persistent sharing willingness, but they indirectly influence the persistent sharing behaviors by the mediating effect of different autonomous motivations.

This study contributes theoretically and practically. First, the results suggest that a particular motivation in different contexts has a different degree of autonomy. In addition, explanations are offered for the phenomenon that suggest that controlled motivations directly affect autonomous motivations. It was found that the contextual factors of competence support and relatedness support also have influence on different autonomous motivations, and hence encourage knowledge-sharing behaviors. Specific suggestions for QQ group managers and information seekers are proposed.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the cultural influences on knowledge sharing behavior in project teams.

In this paper a simulation setting is used to assess the cultural influences on knowledge sharing. All intercultural simulations were part of an educational program, in intercultural management (MBA level) and of executive development programs respectively.

The findings in the paper show that different cultural backgrounds of team members due to different ethnicities, gender, national culture or functions create a context of cultural complexity, which might affect knowledge sharing in a negative way. The results of the simulations show that the different identities of team members have an important influence as they might trigger sentiments of negative stereotyping. The findings also reveal that knowledge sharing is only likely to occur if new project members are welcomed emotionally as valuable contributors to a common task.

Given the exploratory nature of this paper, it suggests using the results as a starting ground for future empirical research. The propositions that were developed on the basis of the research may be tested in subsequent studies applying a different research methodology.

Based on the paper's findings, recommendations for project management in situations of cultural complexity are developed.

The paper extends existing knowledge on cultural influences in knowledge sharing especially in the context of project teams.

Despite the prevalence of destructive leadership in today’s workplace, the authors know little about its influence on knowledge sharing among employees. Using the conservation of resources (COR) theory, the authors examine how abusive supervision influences psychological capital and affects knowledge sharing. Further, the authors take a context variable (group trust) to explore its cross-level influence on the above causal relationship. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study conducts multi-level analyses of knowledge sharing. Abusive supervision and psychological capital are the determinants of knowledge sharing at the individual level. Group trust is considered a group-level variable with cross-level influences. The final sample for an empirical test conducted using hierarchical linear modeling includes 449 group members of 55 working groups.

Empirical results show that abusive supervision is negatively related to knowledge sharing. The results also indicate that psychological capital mediates the relationship between abusive supervision and knowledge sharing. At the group level, group trust has a direct cross-level impact on employees’ knowledge sharing and mitigates the relationship between abusive supervision and psychological capital.

Applying the COR theory, this is the first research to discuss how destructive leadership (i.e. abusive supervision) influences knowledge sharing. Based on the multi-level perspective, the authors also examine how group trust can have a cross-level impact on knowledge sharing and the relationship between abusive supervision and psychological capital.