The Effect of Coworkers' Task-related Help Seeking and Their Characteristics on Knowledge Sharing in Coworker Relationship

동료의 과업관련 도움요청과 이들의 특징이 지식공유에 미치는 영향에 관한 연구

Knowledge management system is crucial for increasing organizational performance. However, despite this importance of knowledge management system, many companies fail to facilitate individual employees' knowledge sharing. One of reasons for this failure is the lack of consideration of how individual employees' characteristics and their interpersonal relationship influence on individual-level knowledge sharing. To explain individual-level knowledge sharing, this study investigates the mechanism that employees engage in knowledge sharing activities with their coworkers from the social exchange perspective. We have two purposes of study. First, we examine whether coworker's task-related help seeking affects employee's knowledge sharing with them. Second, we investigate the influence of help-seeker' characteristics as moderators on the relationship between task-related help seeking and knowledge sharing. Specifically, we considered coworker's maladjustment, LMX, and ability as moderators. Our analysis of 192 employees shows that the main effect of coworker's task-related help seeking on knowledge sharing is not significant. However, coworker's maladjustment and LMX moderate the relationship between task-related help seeking and knowledge sharing. The positive relationship between task-related help seeking and knowledge sharing is stronger when help seeker's maladjustment is high than when it is low. And the positive relationship between task-related help seeking and knowledge sharing is weaker when help seeker's LMX is high than when LMX is low. The results of this study have theoretical implications that enrich our understanding of individual-level knowledge sharing, and managerial implications that suggest employees' appropriate attitudes to facilitate knowledge sharing in a coworker relationship.