Factors influencing knowledge sharing practices among librarians in the Malaysian academic libraries

Abstract

Several scholars have identified knowledge sharing as a primary focus area within the scope of knowledge management. Many organisations today have also recognised this act as one of the essential resources in the management of their institutions. Hence, this research sought to utilise the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) as the underlying research framework to examine the attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control towards the library staff's knowledge sharing intentions. Five academic (university) libraries in Malaysia were chosen as the sources for the study's sampling, while both an electronic mailed survey questionnaire and hard copies were utilised in collecting the data from the respondents. In the data analysis, descriptive statistics, mean value, and standard deviation methods were applicable in the data. The study indicated that knowledge sharing practises substantially affected some percentage of the study hypotheses. Based on the rule of thumb, the following hypotheses were supported: H5, H6, H7, and H8, but the hypotheses that follow, H1, H2, H3, and H4 are non-supported. In contrast, it was discovered that knowledge sharing practises deviate from the projected level of intention by about 0.2 %. The predicted intention is 5.9 % based on attitude, perceived behavioural control, and subjective norm; however, attitude is predicted to be 1.3 % based on trust and relationship. It determines that the most likely explanation for the 37.4 % explained by teamwork skills is perceived behavioural control. But corporate culture showed that the subjective norm was the most important cause because it accounted for 37.9 % of the results.