Do job characteristics shape academics’ affective commitment and knowledge sharing behavior in the institutes of tertiary education?

Abstract

Considering the fundamental role of higher education institutions (HEIs) in knowledge creation and dissemination, a strong culture of knowledge sharing is undoubtedly indispensable for their success and sustainability. Prior research reveals that knowledge sharing behavior (KSB) tends to be largely shaped by the job characteristics. However, these studies have surprisingly overlooked examining the link of job characteristics with KSB in the academic setting. Moreover, workplace attitudes have been disregarded as a possible linking mechanism between job features and KSB in the current literature. Thus, this study seeks to bridge the gap in knowledge by exploring the effects of job features, namely task significance (TS), job autonomy (JA), task identity (TI), skill variety (SV), and feedback (FB) on academic staff's KSB in HEIs. Moreover, the study aims at examining a workplace attitude (i.e., affective commitment) as a linking mechanism between job characteristics and KSB. The study acquired 224 replies from the academic staff of private HEIs in Bangladesh by means of convenience sampling technique and a structured questionnaire. The statistical analysis computed by the PLS-SEM indicates that TS, SV, and FB have a significant direct influence on KSB. However, TI and JA were discovered to be irrelevant to KSB in direct impact assessment. Moreover, affective commitment mediated the link between all five job features (i.e., JA, FB, SV, TI, and TS) and KSB. According to the findings, faculty positions that are furnished with favorable job attributes tend to encourage the academic staff to engage more in KSB directly and indirectly via affective commitment. The study's findings also put forward potential ramifications for the researchers, and university administrators.