Fostering the Knowledge-Sharing Behavior of Customers in Interorganizational Healthcare Communities

Knowledge is one of the most important sources of competitive advantage for companies. Recently nonprofit organizations and governments as well as companies have been trying to maximize knowledge sharing and creation. Despite its importance, sharing knowledge is not an easy task to implement. Therefore, a company has to provide a knowledge-enabling context to facilitate its customers´ knowledge activities. The objective of this research is to understand knowledge sharing in interorganizational customer communities and to figure out how a company fosters its customers´ knowledge sharing. For this, a model composed of behavioral intention, community features, empowered leadership, and a company as a knowledge activist was developed.