The Impact of Trust, Personality and Psychological Contract on Knowledge Sharing Behavior in Multinational Enterprise in term of Vietnamese Employees’ Perspective

Abstract

Most of previous studies have been identified knowledge sharing has a positive impact on organization performance. Nowadays, organizations suppose to understand that they are standing in the knowledge age, where knowledge is playing the major role with their success if they know how to get, how to implement and how to make knowledge become their competitive advantages. From the multinational enterprises (MNEs) point of view, the purpose of encourage employees sharing their experiences and experts for the benefit of their co-workers and the organization in related with the difference in culture, knowledge background, working style, is very important for administrators to seriously deal with. Based on previous studies, we have already known that trust, personality and psychological contract, itself likely have influence on knowledge sharing behavior. The principal idea in this study aims to investigates the relationship between trust, personality and psychological contract and knowledge sharing behavior, analyze how they can affect knowledge sharing behavior. With those results, the organizations can apply strategies to engage their employees in contributing and seeking knowledge, in order to improve the performance of organization. This study was conducted a survey by giving the questionnaire to Vietnamese employees who are working at MNEs in three industries parks near Ha Noi, the capital located in the north of Vietnam and three organizations in banking and insurance industry located in Ha Noi. The data obtain through conducting a survey was analyzed by various techniques such as descriptive analysis to provide the information regarding the respondent’s gender, age, education, position and department where they are working, then using Cronbach’s α, regression analysis, t-test to examine the correlation between each variable and observe the different point of view related to the respondent’s demographic profile. The results have shown that most of hypotheses are supported, except the hypothesis about the impact of Competence-based Trust on Implicit Knowledge Sharing Behavior, it means most of all three independent variables are positively related to knowledge sharing behavior. Our findings suggest that, in order for Explicit Knowledge Sharing Behavior to be enabled, integrity-based trust must firstly consider in diffusing in the relationship between employee and employer, also among employees within the organization. Beside, when the manager propose to encourage their employees engage in sharing Implicit Knowledge, they should consider seriously to come out with the appropriate relational contract to satisfy both the benefit of two sides toward the perception of exchange knowledge, expertise and working experience. These aspects are not only important especially to management, but also to the individuals who share knowledge, their feelings of having shared knowledge appear to be more important. With the current understanding that knowledge sharing is more of a human activity than technology, it is important that any information system should be assistive in boosting employees’ confidence that they are indeed sharing knowledge.