Individual, social, and organizational contexts for active knowledge sharing in communities of practice

Firms that have implemented knowledge management initiatives are now interested in nurturing voluntary knowledge sharing organizations, called communities of practice (CoPs). Adopting the Triandis model on attitude formation, we identified and validated a set of organizational factors that was anticipated to have effects on knowledge sharing by CoP members such as perceived consequences, affect, social factors and facilitating conditions. One hundred and seventy-nine members from 70 CoPs of a large multinational electronics firm participated in this survey. Based on the PLS analysis, perceived consequences, affect, social factors, and facilitating conditions were found to significantly affect knowledge sharing in CoPs.

► This study identified and validated the factors which affect the CoP members’ knowledge sharing activities, adopting the Triandis model on attitude formation. ► The result confirms that all four antecedents (perceived consequences, affect, social factors, and facilitating conditions) significantly affect CoP knowledge sharing. ► This study has also developed the new sub-dimensions for the perceived consequences construct from the organization-member (anticipated recognition), member-member (anticipated reciprocal relationship), and member-work (anticipated usefulness) to fit the CoP knowledge sharing context.