Committed to share: commitment and CMC use as antecedents of knowledge sharing

TLDR

Knowledge sharing is a critical process in modern organizations, enabling shared intellectual capital, and it involves distinct activities of donating and collecting knowledge. The study investigates how organizational commitment and computer‑mediated communication (CMC) influence knowledge sharing, hypothesizing that both commitment and CMC use positively affect donating and collecting knowledge, and that CMC use boosts commitment. Case studies show that CMC use precedes organizational commitment, which in turn drives willingness to donate and collect knowledge, and that distinguishing donating vs. collecting, organizational vs.

Abstract

Abstract Knowledge sharing is an important process in modern organizations, as successful knowledge sharing can result in shared intellectual capital, an increasingly important resource. In this paper, we study the influence of organizational commitment and the use of computer‐mediated communication (CMC) on knowledge sharing. In knowledge sharing, an important distinction is made between knowledge donating and knowledge collecting. Based on relevant literature, we hypothesize that commitment and CMC use are both positively related to both knowledge donating and knowledge collecting. We also hypothesize that CMC use positively influences commitment. On the basis of two case studies our conclusion is that CMC use is an antecedent of organizational commitment, and that such commitment, in turn, influences the willingness to both donate and collect knowledge. Further analyses lead to the conclusion that it is important to distinguish different processes of knowledge sharing (donating and collecting), different levels of commitment and knowledge sharing (organizational and departmental), and different modes of CMC use in order to get a full grasp of the relationship between commitment, knowledge sharing and CMC use. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.