Motivation and barriers to participation in virtual knowledge‐sharing communities of practice

TLDR

The study investigates motivation and barriers to employee participation in virtual knowledge‑sharing communities of practice at Caterpillar Inc., and proposes building trust and outlines future research directions. The authors carried out a qualitative study of employee participation in virtual knowledge‑sharing communities of practice at Caterpillar Inc. Employees who view knowledge as a public good experience easy knowledge flow, yet many hesitate to contribute because of fear of criticism or uncertainty about the relevance or accuracy of their input.

Abstract

This paper reports the results of a qualitative study of motivation and barriers to employee participation in virtual knowledge‐sharing communities of practice at Caterpillar Inc., a Fortune 100, multinational corporation. The study indicates that, when employees view knowledge as a public good belonging to the whole organization, knowledge flows easily. However, even when individuals give the highest priority to the interests of the organization and of their community, they tend to shy away from contributing knowledge for a variety of reasons. Specifically, employees hesitate to contribute out of fear of criticism, or of misleading the community members (not being sure that their contributions are important, or completely accurate, or relevant to a specific discussion). To remove the identified barriers, there is a need for developing various types of trust, ranging from the knowledge‐based to the institution‐based trust. Future research directions and implications for KM practitioners are formulated.