Factors influencing knowledge sharing among IT geographically dispersed teams

Abstract

• Affiliation, Enjoyment and Attitude Towards KS are positively associated with KS Behavior. • Enjoyment is the most important predictor of KS Behavior. • Trust and Reciprocal Benefits are not significantly associated with KS Behavior. • Top Management Support does not moderate the relationships studied. Knowledge sharing (KS) is a crucial issue for geographically dispersed IT teams. However, there is a lack of studies on the variables that affect the willingness and motivation of these teams to engage in KS behavior. We aim to analyze the joint and the differentiated effects of individual, team and organizational variables that affect KS behavior. We use a sample of 87 IT Portuguese professionals who work on geographically dispersed teams to test a conceptual model with partial least squares (PLS). Subsequently, we use importance-performance map analysis (IPMA) to analyze differences in subgroups of the sample. The PLS results indicate that there are only three predictors of KS behavior: enjoyment, affiliation, and attitude. We find no significant effects for trust, reciprocal benefits, and top management support. The IPMA results show that enjoyment is of the utmost importance, especially for women and seniors, and affiliation is crucial for juniors. The attitude towards KS is also very important in the overall sample but registers a low performance for women and juniors. The practical applications comprise the need to add enjoyment to recruitment criteria, to address attitude towards KS in training and development, and to create socialization opportunities for new team members.