Understanding the Factors Influencing the Value of Person-to-Person Knowledge Sharing

It is generally accepted that knowledge sharing is a difficult task for organizations. Many reasons for this difficulty have been proposed. In this paper, we offer another. Specifically, we build on Zander and Kogut’s work [29] and examine the relationship between knowledge dimensions and knowledge sharing. Departing from their study, we focus on person-to-person, rather than organization-to-organization, knowledge sharing. We surveyed 68 employees of a Workman’s Compensation Board in Canada. To analyze the data, we employed Hierarchical Linear Modeling. The results demonstrate that complexity and teachability increased person-to-person knowledge sharing but observability did not. Contrary to expectations, the availability of codified knowledge in a knowledge management system (KMS) had no impact on person-to-person knowledge transfer; individuals were as likely to share knowledge person-to-person regardless of whether there was a KMS available that contained appropriate knowledge.