Female Academics’ Knowledge Sharing Behaviour in a Gender Non-Mixed Work Environment

Abstract

Universities are keen to improve the opportunities for knowledge sharing (KS) amongst the academics who are their cornerstone, by improving the connections between them. Creating and disseminating knowledge are fundamental academic activities and beneficial to the university. However, the actual KS behaviours of academics may be constrained by numerous factors. Previous KS research has focused on factors influencing KS in business or academic environments that are gender-mixed, i.e. males and females work alongside each other in offices or campuses. This study is unusual and may be unique as it addresses KS behaviours in the gender non-mixed academic environment of Saudi Arabia’s King Saud University. This University has entirely separate campuses for males and females, conforming to national gender-segregation laws. Using widely accepted constructs of the Theory of Planned Behaviour, the study will examine the impacts of individual (reputation, rewards and self-efficacy), organisational (culture, top management support, trust, social networks and vision and goals) and technological (information technology infrastructure, applications) factors on intention to share knowledge among female academics. Quantitative, via questionnaires, and qualitative, via interviews, data will be collected to test proposed hypotheses regarding barriers and inducements to KS intentions. The value of this research will be to increase our understanding of the factors affecting KS in universities, specifically among female academics, in an environment that has its own specificity and to make appropriate recommendations to enhance participation in KS activities.