Self-Learning and Self-Satisfaction: Exploring the Relationship Through Knowledge-Sharing Behaviour

Introduction

In the era of globalization, the relentlessness of the competition has increased enormously. Various challenges such as uncertainty and continuous changes in the society, has directed sharing of knowledge among individuals as the new cornerstone in the domain of knowledge management (Fullwood, Rowley, & McLean, 2019; Muhammed, Doll & Deng, 2009; Lichtenstein & Hunter, 2006). Knowledge sharing among individuals help organizations to meet various challenges posed by the changing business environment which may otherwise defunct the existing assets of the organization (Grant, 1996; Spender, 1996). Lack of knowledge sharing among individuals not only hinders the production of new knowledge within organizations but also affects the overall learning of the individuals, thereby causing abrasion of the existing organizational assets (Shin, Picken & Dess, 2017; Pangil & Nasrudin, 2008). Therefore, viewing the need for existence, organizations are adapting various measures to preserve their important knowledge resources and keep themselves over and above their competitors (Kasim, 2015). In consequence, knowledge sharing practices among organizational members has been identified as the best way to manage knowledge assets of the organizations (Blankenship & Ruona, 2009). The underlying reason for this may be due to its increased importance in the explanation of various advantages of knowledge sharing (Donate & Guadamillas 2015; Yang, 2007; Dixon, 2000) for both individuals as well as organizations.

The advantages for individuals can be noted as improvement in an individual’s work performance (Akram & Bokhari, 2011), an innovative work behaviour (Yu, Yu & Yu, 2013) and for organizations these advantages can be recognized as improved performance (Tseng & Lee, 2014; Hsu, 2008); improved productivity (Noman & Fouad, 2014); improve organizational effectiveness (Jennex & Olfman, 2005, 2006) and improvement in innovation capability (Yesil & Dereli, 2013) etc. Considering knowledge as an asset that is stored in the minds of the employees (Titi-Amayah, 2013) it becomes important to understand the effect of knowledge sharing behaviour on an individual’s learning and their satisfaction so that the organizations can be benefitted from this important resource. Further, it has also been viewed that there is abundant literature on knowledge sharing behaviour, but very few studies have explored knowledge sharing behaviour from the point of view of an individual specifically with respect to their self-perception regarding learning and satisfaction derived from sharing knowledge with each other. This limited focus poses serious questions to the completeness of the theory and narrates the urgent need of the research work to focus on it. Therefore, the focal point of the present research is to answer two questions, first is: whether there exist a relation between knowledge sharing and self-learning and secondly: is there any relation between self-learning through knowledge sharing and self-satisfaction of individuals.