“Why should I share what I know?” -Antecedents for enhancing knowledge-sharing behavior and its impact on shared mental models in steel production

Abstract

Shared Mental Models, with respect to the cognitive architecture of teams, are believed to be important for team functioning and performance. One influencing factor for building and optimizing shared mental models in teams is knowledge-sharing behavior, which is assumed to be affected by individual factors. These factors include attitude, subjective norms, self-efficacy and intention. Additionally, there are five organizational factors: social ties, organizational communication, team communication, perceived appraisal and organizational support. One hundred and twenty-three shop floor workers took part in our study to investigate the importance of individual and organizational factors for knowledge-sharing behavior and its impact on shared mental models. The results indicate that taken together, the assumed predictors, especially subjective norms, organizational communication and social ties, explained 31% of the variance in knowledge-sharing behavior. In turn, knowledge-sharing behavior had a significant impact on all four types of shared mental models. We discuss the implications of our findings in terms of supporting interventions in organizations and of further shared mental model research in production settings.