Abstract
Prior research of knowledge sharing between firms mainly focuses on enabling factors, such as benefits resulting from knowledge sharing, leading to an overlook at barriers. Guided by transaction cost economics and social exchange theory, our study constructed an evolutional game model to analyse the dynamic evolution process of the firm’s knowledge sharing behaviour in a setting of supply chain networks. Using a simulation in our game model, we firstly reveal how a long-term strategy for supply chain partners towards knowledge sharing is determined through reaching an equilibrium between enabling factors (revenue gained in various forms) and impeding factors (knowledge leakage) in a dynamic process. Secondly, our analysis demonstrates that the competition or rivalry side of the “co-opetition” relationship acts as the major barrier for knowledge sharing due to the sharer’s concern of knowledge leakage. Thirdly, our model has identified knowledge relevancy as the inherent property of knowledge and the firm’ ability of knowledge inference as two important factors influencing knowledge leakage.
Highlights
Chain management (SCM) plays a critical role for the modern economy [1], in which individual firms become highly interdependent within supply chain (SC) networks, so that business competition increasingly occurs at a SC level, rather than an individual firm level [2]
Our analysis shows that the saddle point D(x*, y*) and related Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS) are affected by both initial values and dynamic changes of relevant parameters
While knowledge sharing (KS) has become increasingly important for firms in SC networks to improve their competitive advantages, influencing factors and their mechanisms regarding the firm’s KS have not received adequate research attention
Summary
Chain management (SCM) plays a critical role for the modern economy [1], in which individual firms become highly interdependent within supply chain (SC) networks, so that business competition increasingly occurs at a SC level, rather than an individual firm level [2]. A common feature of these studies is that they are built upon the same assumption that firms are willing to share their knowledge As a result, this stream of research tends to overlook barriers to KS and fails to answer the critical question of what factors influence the firm’s willingness/unwillingness of KS. Leakage risk is addressed in the model by assessing two factors of knowledge relevancy and knowledge inference ability By integrating these influencing factors within a game theoretical framework, our study examines individual and joint effects of these factors on the firm’s development of the evolutional stable KS strategy.
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