Exploring the Effects of Team Collaborative Norms and Team Identification on the Quality of Individuals' Knowledge Contribution in Teams

Abstract

Organizations use teams to generate novelty and useful ideas; thus, studying knowledge sharing in a team setting is important. It is essential to understand what and which factors drive the team members' high-quality knowledge contribution in a team meeting. Drawing on theories of social exchange and social capital, this paper proposes and empirically tests how an individual's cost-benefit factors and team contextual factors interact in increasing the quality of knowledge contribution in an expanded group support system meeting; additionally, a laboratory experiment with 146 participants across 30 teams was conducted to test out the proposed research model. According to the results, team collaborative norms, team identification, and enjoyment in helping others are critical predictors of the quality of individuals' knowledge contributions in a team setting environment. Team collaborative norms and identification are also critical moderators of the quality of individuals' knowledge contributions. Specifically, when weak team collaborative norms exist, loss of knowledge power inhibits contributions of useful knowledge, and the reciprocity benefit motivates contributions of useful knowledge. Further, when weak team identification exists, codification effort inhibits contributions of useful knowledge, and economic reward motivates contributions of useful knowledge. These findings have significant implications for future research and practice.