Knowledge Sharing Behavior from Game Theory and Socio-Psychology Perspectives

Many researches have studied the factors that hinder knowledge sharing from technological or organizational perspectives. However, limited research attention has been given to the individual´s salient beliefs about knowledge sharing. This paper aims to study the role of individual´s attitude towards knowledge sharing, from a socio-psychological perspective, and how it drives the decision to share knowledge. The paper proposes that an individual´s knowledge sharing behavior is driven by a set of salient beliefs that are not unlike the notion of payoff in game theory. Using the case of a telecommunication company in Egypt, the paper employed multi-person game theoretic structure to determine the game played by the employees. The researcher found that the perceived payoff of knowledge sharing can be characterized by a multi-person game and that drivers of individual´s behavior are self esteem, expected association, expected contribution, self consistency, level of understanding, time to share, and self interest