• Information Systems Review
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.131-145
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• 2009

Knowledge management is systematic management of vital knowledge resources and its associated processes of creating, gathering, organizing, diffusion, use and exploitation. A key challenge emerging for such organizations is how to encourage knowledge sharing within organization because knowledge is the organization's intellectual capital, of increasing importance in promoting competitive advantages. Isolated initiatives for promoting knowledge sharing and team collaboration, without taking consideration of the knowledge sharing limitations and constraints can defeat further development of KM culture. This article investigates knowledge sharing bottlenecks and proposes the use of community of practice as an effective instrument for knowledge sharing. The article demonstrates the opportunity for overcoming barriers of knowledge sharing through the application of communities of practice. The article introduces a steel company case as the best practice of communities of practice. Then, the paper empirically analyzes the case study to provide evidence for the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed approach.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.119-129
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• 2013

The degree to which people share knowledge has major impacts on the effectiveness of virtual community of practice (VCoP). As an extension to the previous study which investigated the effect of individual cooperative types (cooperator, reciprocator, and free rider) on knowledge sharing, it is investigated how much increase in the degree of cooperation will enhance knowledge sharing when there are more knowledge contributors and strong ties exist across the community. Simulation method is adopted to measure the effect of the cooperative type and tie strength on knowledge sharing. The results reveal that the tie strength positively affects knowledge contribution in VCoP and strongly tied VCoP generates equivalent level of knowledge contribution as that of weakly-tied VCoP with 5% more contributors.

• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.23-38
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to find factors affecting knowledge sharing activities which have two aspects-quantity and quality. We surveyed the members of a virtual community of practice called "UPOW.com". It is dedicated to sharing knowledge about job related problems, questions, experience of educational official. This study derived factors from social cognitive theory and social capital theory. The findings of the study can be summarized as follows; first, quality of shared knowledge and quantity of knowledge sharing both have positive effect on knowledge utilization. Second, individual factors and social relations have positive effect on quantity of knowledge sharing. However, individual factors' effects on quantity of knowledge sharing are not significant. These results have academic implications to find factors affecting both side of knowledge sharing. Also these finding will give an insight to develop virtual community of practice for an organization's sustained competitiveness.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.15 no.12
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• pp.586-595
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• 2015

This paper explores the relationship between senior workforce's education & training and job satisfaction. Further, the mediating effect of knowledge-sharing practice is also analyzed. We used 970 senior workforce's survey data from Human Capital Corporate Panel. Using structural equation modeling, the results suggest as follows. First, senior workforce's education & training had a positive effect on job satisfaction. Second, senior workforce's knowledge-sharing practice had a positive effect on job satisfaction. Third, a mediation analysis reveals that knowledge-sharing practice significantly mediates the relationship between education & training and job satisfaction. Several theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

• Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.12-37
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• 2013

Organizational climate and organization culture can be some of the leading factors in hindering knowledge sharing within the organization. It is generally accepted that successful knowledge management practice, including knowledge sharing, comes as a result of a conducive and knowledge sharing friendly environment. Organizations that promote and reward collective work generate a trustful and a more collaborative learning culture. The perception of fairness in an organization has been considered an important indicator of employee behavior, attitude, and motivation. This study investigates organizational justice perception and its impact on knowledge sharing practices among forensic experts in the Turkish National Police. The study findings revealed that senior officers, who are experts in the field, have the strongest organizational justice perception. Meanwhile, noncommissioned officers or technicians bear positive but comparatively weaker feelings about the existence of justice within the organization. The study argues that those who satisfy their career expectations tend to have a higher organizational justice perception.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.71-88
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• 2013

The aim of this study was to investigate why people voluntarily contribute knowledge to others, primarily strangers, in the electronic network of practice for job examination expected potential competing. This paper is organized as follows. First, we introduce the electronic network of practice which is the knowledge sharing community for job examination, and discuss the key issues for understanding knowledge sharing in these networks on the basis of individual motivations, relational capital, sense of community, and sense of rivalry to develop a research model for this study. To test the proposed research model, we adopted the survey method for data collection, and examined our hypotheses by applying the multiple regression analysis method to the collected data. Our unit of analysis was the individual. The findings of this study show that the intention of knowledge sharing is influenced by the reputation and the enjoy helping as the factors of individual motivations, by the reciprocity as the factor of relational capital, and by a sense of rivalry as a psychological factor. Lastly, contributions of this study and future research opportunities are also discussed.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.103-124
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• 2014

Prior studies on knowledge sharing have concentrated primarily on either organizational or individual characteristics. However, by focusing on the interaction between members in On-line communities of practice (CoPs), we seek to identify and analyze factors that affect knowledge sharing by members in CoPs. Therefore, we examine if the independent variables such as interactivity, followership, and trust have positive impacts on the dependent variables such as commitment to CoPs and intention to share knowledge. In addition, this study also investigates the relationship between commitment to CoP and intention to share knowledge. The empirical results show that interactivity has a positive impact on commitment, but an insignificant impact on intention to share knowledge. Besides, trust between members is significantly associated with intention to share knowledge, whereas it does not have a significant effect on commitment. Moreover, followership is significantly related to both commitment and intention to share knowledge. These empirical findings show that the relationship between members in CoPs play a significant, positive role in intention to share knowledge. In conclusion, this research contributes to shedding a light into both interactions between members in and commitment to CoPs that are critical to facilitate knowledge sharing.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2015.10a
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• pp.654-655
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• 2015

In construction industry, while requiring advanced knowledge of technicians through a long experience, there is a problem with the tacit knowledge is not carried on the inner organization. Recent technological developments allow sharing and application of the tacit knowledge while technology tools use the CoP(Community of Practice) that mainly interacts between people. Clearly, the most consideration in stimulating CoP is the circulation of knowledge, namely the willingness to share and use knowledge with others. It is then important to explain why individuals factors to share and use knowledge with others when they have a choice. In this paper, we would like to report to find out about factors whether people are actually sharing and using the knowledge obtained in CoP. The results help to analyze which factors are influenced to be a successful CoP in construction industry. The implications for theory and future research direction are discussed.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.63-86
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• 2008

Knowledge management system(KMS) was introduced into the company in order to apply knowledge management. But according to KMS is changed into information management system, the company is considered Community in Practice(CoP) instead of KMS. Because within CoP, individuals can interact with one another to solve problems, test new ideas, learn about new developments in their field and build a sense of affiliation with others in similar circumstances. In spite of it's importance there is few empirical study about CoP. So the purpose of this study is to examine which personal characteristics influence knowledge sharing and which context factors(including structural and relational characteristics) moderate relationship between individual characteristics and knowledge sharing within CoP through empirical study.

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.91-118
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• 2017

Purpose The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of social capitals on organizational knowledge sharing characteristics and individual innovation activities in community of practice (CoP) of manufacturing company. Design/methodology/approach For this purpose, we divide social capitals as three dimensions, i.e. structural, relational, and cognitive dimension. Structural dimension also consists of closure and Brokerage. Relational social capital is defined as trust about colleagues, superior authorities, and organization. Then, cognitive social capital is defined as a shared understanding among individuals, such as a shared language and codes within CoP. Knowledge Sharing is defined as quantity and quality of shared knowledge. We also defines the cause and effect relationships among social capitals, organizational knowledge sharing characteristics, and individual innovation activities in CoP of manufacturing company as follows. The social capitals will have positive effects on quality of shared knowledge. Then the quality of shared knowledge will have positive effects on the individual innovation activities. This paper tested the validity of these hypothesized casual effects and the sub-hypothesized causal relationships. For the purpose, we used the Partial Least Squares (PLS) for analyzing the causal relationships. Findings Our empirical results show that social capitals of CoP mostly have effects on organizational knowledge sharing characteristics (quantity and quality of shared knowledge) and knowledge sharing activities also have effects on individual innovative activities in the workplace. In this study, these result have a significant implication that a private company will be able to gain organizational innovative performance much better by strengthening CoP supporting activities.