Knowledge Management Case Study: Investigating the Concept of 'Knowledge Ownership'

Abstract

The case study has been designed to investigate the concept of within the context of knowledge sharing in organisations. A significant proportion of the firm’s collective wisdom comes from her employees and a growing number of researchers have alluded to the importance of ownership perceptions in influencing employee attitudes and behaviour for knowledge sharing in the workplace. The purpose of the case study is to examine the relationship between employee ownership perceptions and their willingness to share their knowledge assets, both tangible and intangible. To this end, the case study differentiates between perceptions of the organization’s rights to knowledge created by the employee (organisational ownership) and perceptions of the individual’s rights to knowledge he/she creates (individual ownership). Furthermore, the case study investigates the influence of the work environment (e.g., reward, performance evaluation, organisational procedures, knowledge sharing norms, co-worker relationship, supervisor relationship, etc) on employee ownership perceptions according to the knowledge type (codified or tacit). The data collected as part of this case study are available under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License (see paper for a description of the data and how to obtain a copy).