The Social Processes and Factors Affecting Organizational Knowledge Creation and Sharing in New Zealand Firms

Abstract

This research delves into social processes and antecedent factors that influence organizational knowledge creation and sharing in NZ firms. The ideal processes or barriers have not been fully explored, especially in New Zealand context where the paucity of research in knowledge management still exist. To extend the Knowledge Management research stream, the study incorporates these two theoretical views into a single conceptual model and extend the organizational knowledge creation theory by considering set theory in terms of social and motivational factors. We attempt to link social processes, trust, rewards and IT support constructs within a nomological network that could predict factors that might influence organizational knowledge creation and sharing in New Zealand firms. Data were gathered using an online survey and analyzed using Partial Least Squares technique. Results show that trust, hard rewards and certain social processes have positive impact on organizational knowledge creation and sharing. In addition, trust and soft rewards are found to be positively associated with peer mentoring. Use of IT is positively associated with knowledge combination. Implications of the study are discussed.