Influence of Behavioral Intentions, Affective Trust and Affective Commitment on Knowledge Sharing Behavior

Introduction

Knowledge-intensive organizations need to undergo tremendous challenge to survive in a highly dynamic and competitive market, for which knowledge is considered to be the most important intangible resource and crucial element for sustenance (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Perez & Cruz, 2015; Reychav & Weisberg, 2010). Sharing of knowledge within organizations is a highly desirable behavior for innovation and competitive advantage, which can be utilized for effective organisational performance (Tan & Wong, 2015; Xu & Quaddus, 2012). For positive outlook towards the process of knowledge sharing (KS), firms strategically implement the management practices to overcome barriers in managing organisational knowledge (Bloice & Burnett, 2016), enabling its workers for effective KS and positive organisational behavior (Wu & Lee, 2017), leading to innovation (Bretschneider, & Zogaj, 2016; Schwaer, Biemann, & Voelpel, 2012). However, the process of KS is not spontaneous and depends importantly on the willingness of individuals to share their knowledge and on the internal and external factors which motivate knowledge transfer (Gagné, 2009; Twum-Darko, & Harker, 2017). Determining the influencers which promote positive behavior of employees towards knowledge transfer (Chowdhury, 2005) and strategies to be followed by organizations to improve willingness of their employees towards KS (Stenius, Hankonen, Ravaja & Haukkala, 2016) are identified as important areas of research in knowledge management.

Despite the benefits of knowledge transfer, employees cannot share their knowledge to the co-workers of their organization due to various situational and individual constraints (Cabrera & Cabrera, 2005; Marouf, & Khalil, 2015). The process of knowledge sharing does not always occur on its own, often it has to be triggered through extrinsic (e.g. organisational structure, organisational culture) (Chang & Lin, 2015) or intrinsic (e.g. psychological perspectives) factors (Scovetta, 2017; Tan & Wong, 2015). The complexity in knowledge management system has to be dealt with more focus on individuals and their relationship with each other.

This study attempts to examine very crucial elements of KS behavior: it integrates the influences of behavioral intentions, affective trust and affective organisational commitment on actual behavior of employees towards sharing of knowledge. Prior studies in the area of knowledge management had investigated the individual relationship of these variables with KS behavior, but have not studied the combined effect on employees’ behavior. While recent literature has bridged psychological factors (Ajzen, 1991; Bock, Zmud, Kim, & Lee, 2005; Shanshan, 2013), commitment (Chennamaneni, Teng, & Raja, 2012; Tan & Wong, 2015; Perez & Cruz, 2015; Tohidinia & Mosakhani, 2010) and trust (Bousari & Hassanzadeh, 2012; Casimir, Lee, & Loon, 2012; Rahman & Hussain, 2014; Ribiere, 2009; Rutten, Blaas-Franken, & Martin, 2016) with knowledge management, still there is a gap in understanding whether commitment for organization affects employees’ relationships or their attitude towards KS (Kwok & Gao, 2005). Moreover, examining the effect of commitment in intention-behavior relationship (Ajzen, Czasch, & Flood, 2009) is unique in the field of knowledge management.