Understanding the Antecedents of Knowledge Sharing Behavior From the Theory of Planned Behavior Model: Cross-Cultural Comparisons Between Mainland China and Malaysia.

Min Yang,Ping Xu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.772764

Min Yang, Ping Xu

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.772764

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Abstract

Affected by coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in addition to keeping away the impact of the pandemic on their business practices, many enterprises have proposed relevant measures to protect their employees’ job safety and security. Especially for enterprises with high dependence on knowledge resources, employees’ innovation and knowledge sharing play a vital role. In the context of global economic austerity, how to put forward the corresponding plan of knowledge sharing intention to improve the knowledge sharing behavior of employees for enterprises is worth discussing. Mainland China and Malaysia have different quarantine policies and similar industrial structures. This study examines the awareness of Mainland China vs. Malaysian employees, and evaluates the relationship among self-efficacy, job security, market orientation, knowledge sharing intention, and knowledge sharing behavior from the theory of planned behavior. In this study, a total of 627 Mainland China and 434 Malaysian participants were collected to compare both groups in the development of employees’ knowledge sharing behavior. In this study, a variance-based partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was performed to test the proposed hypothesis and conduct comparative analysis. The results in both the samples show that self-efficacy, job security, and market orientation have positive and significant effects on knowledge sharing intention; self-efficacy has positive and significant effects on job security; knowledge sharing intention has positive and significant effects on knowledge sharing behavior. Moreover, there are several significant differences between Mainland China and Malaysia in the examinations of path comparisons.

Highlights

From the perspective of the organizational knowledge base (Grant, 1991, 1996; Spender, 1996; Teece, 2000), knowledge is the foundation for an organizational competitive advantage, which eventually becomes the most important driving factor of organizational value creation (Fang et al, 2010; Lin et al, 2015)
A structural model was constructed to explore the correlations among self-efficacy, job security, market orientation, knowledge sharing intention, and knowledge sharing behavior
In order to verify the validity of measurement model, this study conducted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) via PLSSEM to examine the construct validity, including convergent and discriminant validity

Summary

Introduction

From the perspective of the organizational knowledge base (Grant, 1991, 1996; Spender, 1996; Teece, 2000), knowledge is the foundation for an organizational competitive advantage, which eventually becomes the most important driving factor of organizational value creation (Fang et al, 2010; Lin et al, 2015). Knowledge transfer among individuals and across organizational boundaries and the storage in and access to knowledge bases have become the rules and practices within organizations, which depend on employees’ knowledge sharing behavior (Hassan et al, 2016). Such knowledge sharing behavior has long been regarded as the most important link between knowledge management factors (Lee and Ahn, 2007; Foss et al, 2010; Ohiorenoya and Obadan, 2014; Wu et al, 2015), and knowledge sharing is viewed as an indicator of knowledge management and organizational learning effectiveness (Bock et al, 2005). Knowledge sharing is considered to be the key to an organization’s success. Decker et al (2009) summarized the reasons as follows: (1) demographic statistics: older workers, or employees with some expertise, will take important organizational knowledge away with them when they retire or leave the organization (Leonard and Kiron, 2002; Olstein et al, 2005); (2) technical factors: with the increase in technical complexity, knowledge sharing will become more important for collective learning, which contributes to the design and improvement of modern operating systems (Lynn et al, 1999; Cavusgil et al, 2003; Kanaan et al, 2013); (3) constant fierce competition in the technical environment: there is a need for effective knowledge sharing between projects to reduce the time spent on research and development as well as the time to market (Yeung et al, 1999); (4) global operations: organizational knowledge sharing is necessary to transfer effective problem solutions or experience across global operating units (Paik and Choi, 2005); and (5) empirical studies have suggested the importance of knowledge and knowledge sharing and transfer in establishing and maintaining a competitive advantage in a knowledge-driven society (Davenport et al, 1998; Argote and Ingram, 2000; Goh, 2002; van Aalst and van der Mast, 2002; Ahn and Chang, 2004)

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