Encouraging knowledge sharing in engineering firms—part II: game theory analysis and firm strategies

Abstract

Encouraging knowledge sharing is the cornerstone of a successful knowledge management system. This paper follows an earlier study that identified incentives and disincentives for knowledge sharing between individual employees in engineering firms and developed contingent assumptions that the contextual factors of firm size and task repetitiveness impact these dynamics. This paper expands on these results using game theory modelling and analysis. Research on intra-organizational knowledge sharing requires an understanding of why and when individuals are willing to share their knowledge; as a result, game theory modelling is ideal for modelling these dynamics and deriving knowledge-sharing strategies. Based on the modelling results, a set of contingent strategies for encouraging knowledge sharing are developed. The results of this study shed light on the knowledge-sharing interactions between individual employees and develop strategies for firms to more efficiently and effectively encourage the sharing of v...