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Knowledge sharing is one of the major processes of knowledge management (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995) and its strategies are keys to organizational and individual development (Alavi & Leidner, 2001; Earl, 2001). It is defined as the process of exchanging and transferring existing knowledge and ideas among people in order to create new knowledge and ideas (Syed, Zaini, Noormala & Zahairah, 2009).
The benefits of knowledge sharing for organizations and individuals are numerous. On the organizational level, the benefits include facilitating knowledge creation (Akhavan, Ghojavand & Abdali, 2012), achieving continuous organizational growth, survival, and development (Durmusoglu, Jacobs, Nayir, Khilji & Wang, 2014), meeting organizational goals and objectives (Wang & Noe, 2010), solving business problems (McDermott & O’Dell, 2001), enhancing performance, maintaining competitiveness and profitability (Hsu, 2008), gaining better understanding of customer needs and identifying new business opportunities (Sandhawalia & Dalcher, 2011), enhancing process efficiency (Chugh, 2012), and improving the knowledge base for decision-making and more balanced policy decisions (Egger, 2013).
On the individual level, the benefits include getting the information easier and faster (Badaracco, 2010), promoting individuals’ learning and innovation (Ling, Sandhu & Jain, 2009), transferring knowledge among workers in the same unit or from one unit to another (Burgess, 2005), strengthening capabilities (Egger, 2013), enhancing performance (Xiao & Jin, 2010), improving efficiency (Cummings, 2004), empowering team effectiveness (Pangil & Chan, 2014), developing strategies to encourage organizational knowledge base (Reychav & Weisberg, 2009), reducing loss of individuals’ knowledge and expertise (Gurbuz, 2008), and transmitting knowledge and expertise to new generations (Badaracco, 2010).
Recognizing the importance of knowledge sharing is creating a demand for applying it in higher education institutions, which are seen as knowledge-intensive environments. The role of knowledge sharing is significant to achieve the maximum results for higher education institutions considering the important role they play in creating, managing, and disseminating knowledge in society (Babalhavaeji & Kermani, 2011).
Moreover, academics are seen as expert knowledge workers engaged in teaching, writing, and research from which their academic institutions generate value. Bearing in mind that higher education institutions grow and prosper from the knowledge of their academics, it is quite necessary to encourage and promote knowledge sharing among academics considering their role in enhancing education, research, and scholarly work (Babalhavaeji & Kermani, 2011).