Managing inter-organizational knowledge sharing

Corporate knowledge is considered a crucial determinant of sustainable competitive advantages. Recent resource-leveraging strategies emphasize inter-firm collaboration and knowledge sharing across firm boundaries, however. This strategic paradox of protecting versus sharing knowledge suggests the need for new paradigms that reconcile intra- and inter-organizational knowledge sharing. Building on organizational collaboration and control theory, this paper investigates contingencies of inter-organizational knowledge sharing and proposes four configurations of inter-organizational knowledge sharing for managing the paradox. It concludes with a critical review, suggestions for further conceptual and empirical research, and implications for research and practice.