Organizational enablers and outcomes of IT affordance actualisation: a socio-technical perspective on knowledge sharing

Abstract

ABSTRACT Using the IT affordance lens, this study presents a holistic socio-technical view of the organisational factors that affect the knowledge-sharing (KS) behaviour of employees. It develops and empirically validates a conceptual model that theorises the relationships between KS affordances, organisational culture, management support, and peer KS in order to specify how these relationships shape the KS behaviour of employees. Data for this study was collected using a survey of a large pool of public service employees working at various government agencies (n = 4,090 respondents). The results of this study provide evidence that KS affordances offered by both traditional KS information systems and by enterprise social media increase employees’ overall willingness to share their knowledge. However, these results also show that KS affordances are more likely to be perceived when organisational culture favours KS, and that management support moderates the relationship between KS affordances and employees’ KS behaviour.