Motivating Knowledge Sharing in Engineering and

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Amy Javernick-Will, A.M.ASCE1 Abstract: Knowledge management initiatives have proliferated in recent years because of the desire to have employees share their knowledge throughout the organization. However, in practice, many of these initiatives fail to achieve their initial goals. Because knowledge fundamentally resides with people, knowledge management research and initiatives must move from a focus on macrolevel variables at the organizational level to include an understanding of microlevel variables at the individual level of why employees engage in these knowledge management initiatives. This research aims to understand participation in organizational knowledge sharing by identifying and exploring the reasons why employees share their knowledge. This is done through qualitative case studies with 48 employees in 13 multinational engineering, construction, and real estate development firms. Using an embedded unit of analysis of knowledge sharing motivations of employees, a qualitative analysis revealed four primary factors related to knowledge sharing: resources, intrinsic motivations, global incentives, and social motivations. The overwhelming majority of responses pertained to social motivations, including reciprocity, conformity to corporate culture, mimicking the behavior of leaders, peer recognition, honoring knowledge sharing commitments, and perceptions of the value of organizational knowledge. These results add to existing literature by identifying microlevel variables of employees’ motivations for knowledge sharing and moving from a focus on barriers to knowledge sharing to a focus on the factors that facilitate knowledge sharing. The results also suggest organizational strategies that may help to address employee motivations and increase knowledge sharing within organizations. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)ME.1943-5479.0000076. © 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers. CE Database subject headings: Information management; Knowledge-based systems; Social factors; Motivation; Incentives; Construction industry. Author keywords: Knowledge management; Social factors; Motivation; Incentives; Construction; Engineering.

Today, the importance of knowledge to an organization is wellestablished. Sharing knowledge can lead to improved absorptive capacity (Cohen and Levinthal 1990); productivity (Dyer and Nobeoka 2000); performance and other capabilities (Haas and Hansen 2007); and sustained competitive advantage (Argote and Ingram 2000; Kogut and Zander 1992). As a result, knowledge is often viewed as a resource with at least as much importance as capital (Conner and Prahalad 1996; Grant 1996; Spender 1996). In today’s competitive and increasingly global marketplace, organizations are especially keen to integrate and transfer the knowledge of their employees to make it available when and where it is needed. As a result, many organizations implement knowledge management initiatives in an attempt to capitalize on this valuable resource. Unfortunately, despite its importance, knowledge sharing is still an emerging area of inquiry whose key variables, relationships, and implications are not yet clear (Foss et al. 2010). It is therefore not surprising that many organizations are left struggling with how to share their knowledge and that many knowledge management systems (some estimate over 50%) implemented in practice fail to 1

Assistant Professor, Univ. of Colorado at Boulder, 428 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309. E-mail: [email protected] Note. This manuscript was submitted on April 9, 2010; approved on June 8, 2011; published online on June 10, 2011. Discussion period open until September 1, 2012; separate discussions must be submitted for individual papers. This paper is part of the Journal of Management in Engineering, Vol. 28, No. 2, April 1, 2012. ©ASCE, ISSN 0742-597X/ 2012/2-193–202/$25.00.

achieve their original goals (Akhavan et al. 2005). In order for knowledge management initiatives to benefit organizations, the variables and relationships that lead to knowledge transfer must be better understood. The majority of prior work on managing knowledge examines constructs and relationships at the macrolevel, generally at the firm-level, leaving little work rooted in microfoundations at the individual level (Foss et al. 2010). Pragmatically, this limitation must be addressed to include a focus on individuals; ultimately, only individual employees can contribute to and draw from an organization’s knowledge base to transfer knowledge. Therefore, understanding an individual employee’s needs and relationships may yield novel organizational insights (Stinchcombe 1991) and lead to a better understanding of what mechanisms cause individuals to share their knowledge in an organization. As a result, this paper seeks to understand what motivates individual employees to share their knowledge with others in the organization. The research analyzed the microlevel construct of employee motivations for knowledge sharing. It also addresses microlevel to macrolevel relationships, i.e., what individual motivations influence organizationwide knowledge sharing, which in turn can lead to insights on macrolevel to microlevel relationships, i.e., how organizations can motivate employees to share knowledge. In addition, the paper expands from a traditional discussion regarding barriers to focus on the factors that facilitate knowledge sharing. The paper begins with a review of accomplishments and gaps within the knowledge management literature. Next, the qualitative case study method is discussed before presenting results regarding employees’ motivations for sharing knowledge. Finally,

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implications for practice, limitations of the research, and directions for future research are discussed.

emphasis on project delivery and performance (Chinowksy and Carrillo 2007) can be counterproductive to a knowledge management strategy.

Knowledge Management

Facilitators

Knowledge generation and transfer are crucial to sustain a competitive advantage for organizations. Like other industries, the engineering and construction industry recognizes the need to share knowledge, diffuse practices, respond quickly to customers, and reduce rework (Carrillo et al. 2004). As a result, companies in the industry are embracing and implementing initiatives to combine and share their knowledge more effectively. However, despite the rise in interest and application of knowledge management programs, confusion remains regarding how to implement knowledge management in practice. Large amounts of research exist on taxonomies of knowledge dimensions (e.g., Polyani 1967; Nonaka 1994; Winter 1987; Szulanski 1996). In addition, many studies focus on organizational processes, technologies, and procedures to transfer knowledge (e.g., Hansen and Nohria 1999; Javernick-Will and Levitt 2010). Many of these prior contributions to the knowledge sharing literature focused on explaining constructs and relationships at the collective macrolevel of the organization. In fact, a literature review of knowledge management articles in 13 management journals from 1996 to 2006 revealed that 71% of the studies were concerned with macro links of organizational variables to knowledge sharing outcomes (Foss et al. 2010). For example, many of the studies link organizational processes, procedures, methods, and technologies to organizational knowledge sharing, but few focus on constructs at the individual level. Some recent studies have examined knowledge sharing at the group or network (e.g., Dyer and Hatch 2004; Hansen et al. 2005), but these focus on relationships between actors in the network and continue to neglect individual variables of motivations and preferences. However, it is precisely the individual level that affects knowledge sharing; only individual employees can provide knowledge to others within an organization or locate and reuse existing organizational knowledge. Knowledge management research must therefore examine individual phenomena to determine the relationships with and factors for organizational outcomes (Rotheraermel and Hess 2007; Foss et al. 2010). This research addresses this gap by identifying employee motivations for sharing knowledge with others in the organization. Understanding why employees share knowledge will help to link microlevel variables of employee motivations with macrolevel outcomes of intraorganizational knowledge sharing.

More work has been done to identify barriers to, rather than the facilitators of, knowledge sharing. Identification of these barriers has lead to suggestions of organizational strategies to address and mitigate these barriers. These suggestions include allocating resources to a knowledge management program (Fong and Chu 2006) and recommendations for developing a communication program to educate employees on the benefits of knowledge sharing and encourage participation in the organization’s knowledge management program (Chinowsky and Carrillo 2007). At the microlevel, social psychologists believe that knowledge sharing motivations can be altruistic or egoistic (Hsu and Lin 2008). As opposed to altruistic motivations, egoistic motivations are on the basis of rewards. Bock and Kim (2002) propose that social associations and the belief that one’s knowledge can provide contributions to the overall organization are the major reasons influencing an individual’s desire to share his knowledge. Tan et al. (2010) indicate five “soft” [non–information technology (IT)] variables that encourage employees to share their knowledge. These include a willingness to share, self-confidence that their knowledge is valuable, trust, shared meanings to understand the knowledge, and personal capability to use a knowledge management system. The majority of these findings emphasize personal characteristics (e.g., self-confidence, altruistic motivations) or rewards. This paper seeks to expand on prior work and address calls for additional knowledge management research at the microlevel to investigate the reasons why employees are motivated to share their knowledge. As a result, employees of engineering, construction, and real estate development organizations were asked open-ended questions regarding their knowledge sharing behaviors and motivations. The question shifts from a prior focus on macrolevel organizational processes to microlevel motivations, and from a focus on barriers to a focus on facilitators. A qualitative case-based method was used to allow people to respond openly, enabling them to respond beyond altruistic intentions and financial rewards to understand other factors that may motivate them to share their knowledge. Using qualitative analysis, the unit of analysis, i.e., the employee’s motivations to share knowledge, was compared across employees and organizations to uncover reasons employees share their knowledge with others in the organization. Understanding these reasons can help organizations develop macrolevel organizational strategies aimed at increasing employee motivations to share knowledge.

Barriers Scholars have begun to identify barriers to knowledge sharing at both the macrolevel and microlevel. Identified barriers include individual, organizational, and technical factors (Riege 2005). On an individual level, employees frequently cite a lack of time to share knowledge (Carrillo and Robinson 2004; Fong and Chu 2006). In addition, many employees believe that “knowledge is power”. They are hesitant to diffuse this power by sharing their knowledge, and are unlikely to support a companywide program (Carrillo and Chinowsky 2006). At a macroorganizational level, a frequently cited barrier is lack of time and lack of monetary resources to support knowledge sharing. In addition, the organizational structure can create knowledge sharing difficulties. Geographical distribution, competition between units (Ardichvili 2008), a hierarchical organizational structure (Reige 2005), poor processes and technologies, or, in the project-based engineering and construction industry, an

Research Method This research used a qualitative case-based method, primarily employing semistructured, open-ended questions to identify and understand employees’ motivations for sharing knowledge with others in the organization. This allowed employees to respond openly, without the constraints of predefined general survey answers, and provide additional context to their responses (Eishenhardt 1989; Yin 2003). This enabled respondents to include additional motivations beyond financial rewards, personal characteristics, and altruistic intentions. In addition, this method allowed follow-on questions to be asked to glean additional insights regarding these motivations. This method resulted in a deeper level of analysis that is impossible on larger survey methods and added new insights regarding the microlevel facilitators of knowledge sharing.

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The unit of analysis, knowledge sharing motivations, was collected from participant responses to interview questions. Documentation, including criteria for review and promotions, examples of awards, corporate communications regarding knowledge sharing, explicit knowledge sharing expectations of employees, and other documents was also collected to verify external organizational factors and provide additional context of why employees may be motivated to share their knowledge. By using more than one data collection method, the validity of the identified constructs, the knowledge sharing motivations, was increased (Eisenhardt 1989). In addition, by interviewing more than one respondent from each firm and interviewing participants from multiple firms, internal construct validity concerns were addressed by allowing the results to be replicated across individuals and companies (Eisenhardt 1991). This research was part of a larger research initiative aimed at understanding how firms acquired and transferred knowledge of foreign locations throughout multinational engineering, contracting, and real estate development companies. As a result, the 13 companies included in this research obtained at least 20% of their revenue from projects outside their home market and had offices located across the world. A total of 48 employees from these firms were interviewed regarding their motivations for sharing knowledge. These participants varied in title, including Executive, President, Principal, Knowledge Manager, Project Manager, and Project Engineer. The interviews were conducted in English in a company office, ranged between 30 min to over 2 h, and took place between September 2007 and August 2008. Table 1 provides information on the companies and respondents. Using ethnographic interviewing techniques proposed by Spradley (1979), the participants were asked semistructured but open-ended questions to obtain detailed descriptions from their personal experiences. A majority of the questions focused on how the company and participants obtained and transferred knowledge within the firm. Questions regarding motivations for knowledge sharing in the company included general questions such as “What motivates you to share your knowledge with your peers?” to more

specific organizational questions regarding incentives, including “How are you evaluated?”, i.e., Is it on the basis of personal performance, project performance, or company performance?, “Is knowledge sharing part of your annual review”, or “Does the company offer specific incentives for knowledge sharing”. By engaging informants, asking follow-on questions, and getting them to describe their experiences and motivations, rich, detailed scenarios were obtained. From the larger research project, over 100 h of audiotape were recorded, transcribed, and imported along with the collected documentation and observation notes into a qualitative software coding program (NVivo). NVivo allows researchers to manage data and ideas and query the data to report results (Bazeley and Richards 2000). Once the data were imported, the interviews and documents were “coded” (Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss and Corbin 1990). To begin, references were categorized within the transcripts and documents to different codes or categories using “topic coding”. For this research, the material was first coded into the expected categories of incentives and altruistic motivations, and the remaining unknown motivations were coded into an “other” category. These larger categories were then coded into smaller subsets, allowing new categories to emerge. After these codes emerged, dynamic analytical coding was conducted. Each coding category was analyzed multiple times to ensure proper fit, the responses were studied to determine why and how these motivations occurred, and “queries” were used within NVivo to help discern larger trends that were occurring within the results. This included querying responses for the relative frequency of responses to different categories. This process involved interpreting and reflecting on the data to draw and verify conclusions and ensure that the results accurately represented the data collected. Throughout this process, detailed records were kept for reliability checks. These records enabled verification that all references were added to appropriate topic categories. In addition, a second person read through responses within each of the categories to determine fit or question the logic of the coding. Finally, the existing theories and literature were enfolded to help sharpen generalizability and improve the construct definition (Eisenhardt 1989). Fig. 1 shows the categories of knowledge sharing motivations that emerged from the research.

Table 1. Case Study Information Company (coded) A B C D E F G H I J K L

Type of company Owner/developer Owner/developer Owner/developer Contractor Contractor Contractor Engineering consultant Engineering consultant Engineering consultant Engineering consultant Engineering consultant Engineering consultant

Main office headquarters

Number of respondents

United States United States United Kingdom Sweden Greece Japan Canada

2 3 3 6 5 2 2

United States

7

United Kingdom

6

Resources

United States

4

Finland

4

Finland

2

As identified in previous literature, resources, primarily time, are generally important to any knowledge management initiative. However, resources are more often identified as a barrier to, rather than a facilitator of, knowledge sharing. Many respondents indicated that they were simply too busy to invest large amounts of time to share their knowledge. An operations manager at Company I described this:

Motivating Knowledge Sharing in Organizations The research identified four primary categories in response to the question “What motivates you (and other employees within your company) to share your knowledge with your peers?”: resources, altruistic intentions, extrinsic global incentives, and social motivations. The overwhelming majority (over 60%) of the responses coded to these four larger categories were because of social motivations. Table 2 shows the relative frequency of responses, i.e., percentage of coded references citing each motivation factor, coded into these four large categories. Each of these categories is discussed in detail subsequently.


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Motivations for Knowledge Sharing

Resources


Reciprocity

Intrinsic Motivations

Conformity or Social Proof

Commitment & Consistency

Extrinsic Incentives

Experts & Authority

Social Factors

Fondness

Scarcity

Fig. 1. Coding tree of identified knowledge sharing motivations

Table 2. Relative Frequency of Responses of Knowledge Sharing Motivations Motivation category Resources Altruistic intentions Extrinsic global incentives Social motivations Total

All companies (%) 17.2 10.7 11.5 60.7 100 n ¼ 122

“I tend to see people not sharing knowledge because they don’t have the time… there doesn’t seem to be a reluctance to share knowledge, but some people just don’t have the time to do it”. Many respondents chuckled when asked if employees were allocated time explicitly to share their knowledge. Only one organization had a formal procedure for allotting time for employees to share their knowledge, and this was only used if a particular project required more than 4 h of time from an expert. A few of the organizations that had formal and established knowledge management initiatives had dedicated knowledge managers or community of practice leaders that specifically had billable hours for knowledge management activities; however, for the overwhelming majority of companies and respondents, knowledge sharing is viewed as “extra credit” or an additional part of everyday work. A principal at Company J commented: “No, we don’t make that provision [to dedicate hours toward knowledge sharing]. If we did, our rates would be too high and we wouldn’t get projects. So it really comes down to people’s goodwill”.

Therefore, although having enough time to engage in knowledge sharing and enough resources to put toward a knowledge management program is important, companies need to look beyond this to understand how knowledge sharing can be integrated into daily activities. Altruistic Intentions Respondents indicated that some people are intrinsically motivated to share their knowledge with others. Altruistic intrinsic motivation originates within a person to engage in an activity for the challenge or sheer enjoyment of that activity (Calder and Staw 1975). Some people enjoy sharing their knowledge with others so much that sharing knowledge tends to be valued for its own sake. An engineering manager at Company I indicated: “I think some people are natural knowledge sharers—They enjoy teaching and telling other people their experiences.” Many people also indicated that it is human nature to want to avoid mistakes and improve processes. As a result, they are more than willing to put forth the additional effort to help their peers: “I think it is just a genuine concern and genuine desire to make sure everything goes right. Most human beings don’t want to get into something to screw it up. You want to be successful. You want to make it to the finish line and you want your people to make it to the finish line.” [Project Manager, Company C] Some companies aim to hire people who are natural knowledge sharers and weed out others that are not intrinsically motivated to share. Respondents discussed the importance of trying to identify these people in the interviewing process: “One of the most important things when I hire an expat is knowing that they are willing to share what they know and mentor local staff.” [Engineering Manager, Company I]

A knowledge manager from Company F that was starting a knowledge management initiative indicated that although they do not have time allocated to perform knowledge management duties, the social pressure generally provides enough influence to encourage the employees to spend time on the initiative. When describing the launch of the knowledge management program, he indicated that social pressure encouraged employees to create time for these activities:

In fact, some companies had a goal to increase members of the younger generation because they were comfortable searching for knowledge, i.e., the Google generation, and sharing knowledge openly, i.e., the Wikipedia generation. In addition, a president at Company E attributed his enthusiasm for creating a program to increase females within the profession directly to knowledge sharing and learning. In his opinion:

“They don’t want to come in front of their friends without being prepared and with nothing to show…so they come in early to do it.”

“I think this industry is dominated by males. Like me, they are not really eager to try to learn from others, they try to show that they have the experience, the knowledge by themselves…


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I think this is connected to the macho culture. So this is the main reason why I try to hire more females, because a more diverse organization will increase our ability to learn and share.” Although not attributed to a specific gender, Menon and Pfeffer (2003) found that external knowledge was valued more highly than internal knowledge. As a result, people are unlikely to transfer knowledge from other parts of an organization if they are not rewarded for utilizing internal knowledge. This was attributed, in part, to the ability of external novel knowledge to elevate the person’s status. This seems to be a factor in the macho culture described previously in which employees want to be recognized for the unique new knowledge that they bring into the organization instead of using their peers existing knowledge. Extrinsic Global Incentives Ideally, organizations would be composed of individuals who were altruistically motivated to share their knowledge; however, this is often not the case. As a result, there has been interest in extrinsic incentives to encourage knowledge sharing behaviors. Osterloh and Frey (2000, p. 539) indicate “extrinsically motivated coordination in firms is achieved by linking employee’s monetary motives to the goals of the firm”. Economists are typically concerned with extrinsic motivation, particularly within transactions cost theory, which assumes that individuals are opportunistic and seek self-interest with guile (Osterloh and Frey 2000). Because of the emphasis on incentives, some of the interview questions asked respondents directly about incentive systems and annual reviews. None of the companies had extrinsic incentives directly related to knowledge sharing. For example, one company that developed a well-known knowledge management system originally planned to offer extrinsic incentives to employees to use the system. If employees shared knowledge on the system or contributed new knowledge to the system, they would earn “points” that could be used for various prizes. However, they decided against this strategy as it was thought to encourage “junk”. Today, they are happy they made this decision. As one employee commented, “management by tokens doesn’t work”. The trouble with providing tangible benefits for a knowledge sharing behavior is that the reward can actually decrease the intrinsic motivation of people to engage in the behavior. Although at first, the reward typically encourages people to perform the desired behavior, if the reward is taken away, people begin to question if the activity is worth pursuing in its own right. The paradox that reward can undermine rather than enhance intrinsic motivation has been observed in many settings with both children and adults (see Brehm et al. 2002, p. 61–62 for some examples). Within knowledge management, a study by Bock and Kim (2002) regarding expected rewards, associations, contribution, and attitude toward knowledge sharing found that expected rewards were negatively related to attitudes regarding knowledge sharing. As the President of Company D indicated: “I’ve heard of many ways of doing it [rewarding people to share their knowledge], but I haven’t seen one method that sort of works all over… you get good grades for doing the right thing, you get paid for sharing your knowledge. This is stupid to me—this is what you are supposed to do as part of your job!” Although no company had tangible rewards directly allocated for knowledge sharing, many organizations had managerial reward and incentive systems set up to encourage employees to focus on the company’s global performance instead of solely on the project or regional office performance. Prior studies have found that

managers who are rewarded solely for the success or failure of their individual divisions are less motivated to communicate and cooperate with others in the firm (Kerr 1985). To encourage communication and thus knowledge sharing, scholars have suggested tying a portion of the incentives to the overall performance of the firm. A study by Lord and Ranft (2000) found that the crossdivisional linkage of incentives was positively associated with knowledge transfer across markets. In line with these studies, many respondents indicated that a portion of their overall performance evaluation or bonus was tied to the overall performance of the firm. These responses were coded into the “Extrinsic Global Incentives” category reported in Tables 2 and 3. Employees indicated that this structure helped to encourage them to share knowledge with peers outside of their projects or regions. “The philosophy of the compensation system makes it very clear that…there should be a global interest. It is distinctly not an ‘Eat what you kill system’. Your performance and your own project is not the sole source—by any means—of your compensation.” [Managing Director, Company A] Many organizations established this incentive system not only to increase knowledge sharing, but also to account for the “peaks and valleys” of different regions and to encourage employees to “save” distressed projects and open new markets: “It [the review and compensation system] has always been global and the reason for that is because it is the way a firm should operate… a lot of times your performance isn’t going to be great… [when you are establishing a new market] and if it wasn’t done globally, there would be no incentive for somebody to go in and be the front guys with a huge amount of commitment into establishing the firm in these new areas.” [Principal, Company J] Overall, the results indicate that firms do not offer extrinsic rewards directly for knowledge sharing; instead, they viewed knowledge sharing as part of the job they perform. However, employees from eight of 13 firms mentioned that a portion of their monetary bonus or evaluation comes from the overall performance of the firm. Social Motivations Social motivations were the most frequently mentioned reason (61%) for sharing knowledge. These results emphasize that social rewards are just as important, if not more important, than monetary rewards. After initially coding the reasons people share knowledge according to resources, altruistic motivations, extrinsic global incentives, and social motivations, there appeared to be a number of subcategories within social motivations that could be expanded to provide a deeper understanding of motivations behind knowledge sharing and develop strategies for organizations wishing to increase knowledge sharing among employees. These subcategories include reciprocity, conformity to corporate culture, mimicking the behavior of leaders, peer recognition, honoring knowledge sharing commitments, and perceptions of the value of organizational knowledge. After these categories were identified, it was realized that many were aligned with social influence and persuasion strategies, particularly reciprocity, social proof, and consistency (Cialdini 1993, 2001). Because organizations often want to encourage their employees to share knowledge, these influence and persuasion tactics may be useful to understand and apply to motivate employees to share their knowledge. Table 3 shows the relative frequency of responses of the subcategories of social motivations in comparison to resources, altruistic


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Table 3. Relative Frequency of Responses Regarding Knowledge Sharing Motivations with Social Motivation Subcategories Motivating factor


Social motivations

Resources Altruistic intentions Extrinsic global incentives Conformity to corporate culture Reciprocity Perceived value/scarcity Honoring a commitment Peer recognition Mimicking leader’s behavior Total

All companies (%) 13.2 8.2 8.8 25.8 20.8 7.5 5.7 5.0 5.0 100.0 n ¼ 159

intentions, and extrinsic global incentives. The analysis of the subcategories reveals that reciprocity and conformance to corporate culture and norms were the most widely cited reasons for wanting to share knowledge. The social motivation categories are described subsequently, and, where applicable, are enfolded with the existing persuasion literature. Reciprocity Reciprocation, the social norm that obliges people to treat others as they have treated been treated or to repay others for what has been received from them, is one of the strongest and most pervasive social forces (Gouldner 1960). There are many examples of reciprocity, both genuine and coercive. Most people have smiled at a coworker just because he or she smiled first or gave funds to an organization that enclosed a small gift in their solicitation for donations (Cialdini 2001). People are left with a feeling of obligation to provide something in return. Within this research, the norm for reciprocation was very strong at encouraging knowledge sharing behaviors. Overall, responses regarding reciprocity consisted of feelings of gratitude, obligation, and trust. Many respondents indicated that they wanted to return the favor of providing knowledge or advice for a project to people who had helped them previously. They felt a sense of obligation to provide knowledge in return. In addition, people indicated that one day they would need knowledge from others. This encouraged them to share their knowledge with others today, knowing that they would one day ask for a favor in return: “There are people out there that will help you, will respond to you when you need help. But the quid proquo is that everybody knows that if somebody asked them for help, you gotta take the time to answer them. And so there is a tremendous empathy within the organization… [everyone] knows that that’s the program, that you should get back what you give, and then at some point you are going to be the one asking for help.” [Managing Director, Company B] Other respondents indicated that they wanted to reciprocate the help and knowledge they received from others by “paying it forward”: “If you talk to any engineer in [Company], they would tell you stories of who the people were that mentored them. Every one of them has got one of those stories. They remember that so and so helped pull their drawings together…so, by the time they get to that point [having enough knowledge to mentor

others] it’s the payback that encourages them to share.” [Knowledge Manager, Company J]. Finally, some felt an obligation to reciprocate the organization’s generosity for longevity of employment by sharing knowledge with others in the organization. A few of the respondents indicated that they believed people were more willing to share their knowledge because they felt secure; they believed that they would contribute knowledge to the organization and, in return, the organization would continue to employ them. As one of them indicated: “Yes, there is a huge amount of support for knowledge management; we think that it will be a competitive advantage in the future. We realized that our competitors are ‘hire and fire”; they don’t have loyalty with their staff and they have trouble transposing knowledge from one arena to another. So, if you retain the people, even in a downturn…. they will want to give back and share.” [Executive, Company H] Conformity to Corporate Culture: Knowledge Sharing as the Norm Conformity refers to the act of changing one’s behavior to match the responses of others (Cialdini and Goldstein 2004). Conformity can occur consciously or unconsciously. Studies within behavioral mimicry have shown that participants unconsciously conformed their expressions and mannerisms to mirror others (Chartrand and Bargh 1999). Other studies have found that people often consciously and deliberately seek to gain the social approval of others by adopting the norms of a group or conforming to others’ beliefs and practices (refer to Brehm et al. 2002; Cialdini and Goldstein 2004). The idea that people mimic the behavior of others and adopt group norms for group approval is tied to the corporate culture within organizations. The norms practiced by employees within organizations help to create social proof for the practices and, in turn, help to spread these norms to others. As a result, the persuasion experts recommend using peer power and social proof to have employees conform to an organizational objective (Cialdini 2001). This category had the highest relative frequency of responses at 26%. People continually mentioned that knowledge sharing was an expectation and norm within their organizations. One project manager from Company J stated: “The thing that amazed me when I joined [the company] was that you could phone up people of different seniority across the firm….people would always be willing to talk to you, to give you time. There was no one too busy. People would always make time, and that was really something that struck me.” If everyone within the company takes time to share their knowledge and answer questions from peers, it becomes institutionalized. It is no longer extraordinary; instead, it becomes standard practice that is expected of all employees. Therefore, establishing a culture with the norm of knowledge sharing is critical to sustain knowledge management initiatives within the organization. A knowledge manager from Company F commented that they want knowledge sharing to: “Become part of their [employees] daily work processes, just as if you were doing an assignment, similar to preparing a budget or estimate.” As part of establishing this norm, it is critical that organizations promote people who share their knowledge with others. This shows employees that knowledge sharing is required to “climb


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the corporate ladder”. In addition, some companies try to develop knowledge sharing as a norm by having prominent people talk about what went wrong on their projects, why it went wrong, and how it could have been done better. By showing that everyone makes mistakes, they provided the social proof necessary to get others to share their lessons as well: “As you can imagine, not many people like to stand up and say, this is what I did wrong…it took some time to get people comfortable to open their dirty laundry in front of everybody and why this is where we had some problems and here is where we could have done it better. But over time it happened.” [Vice President, Company B] This respondent specifically indicated that they do not invite the corporate elite to these meetings on purpose, noting that people would be too nervous, want to make themselves look better, and not get down to “the nitty gritty of what is happening on a project”. Some companies tried to develop the norm for knowledge sharing through communication strategies designed to highlight employees who share knowledge. Documentation from one organization was collected and disseminated to employees regarding “success stories” of the specific ways employees benefitted from sharing knowledge. Some employees repeated these stories to the author, showing that they were engrained in the culture. This same company also provided presentations, posters, and other media used during an annual campaign designed to increase awareness of the knowledge management program and recognize outstanding members. These communication strategies helped to develop the knowledge sharing culture and norms for knowledge sharing in the organization. Mimicking the Behavior of Leaders Because knowledge management initiatives seek to encourage knowledge sharing among employees, the managers and leaders of these initiatives are particularly important to encourage other people to share their knowledge. Many respondents indicated that if the managers and leaders of these initiatives demonstrated knowledge sharing behaviors and were well-liked and influential, there was a better chance that the knowledge management initiative would succeed. Company I discovered a direct correlation between community of practice leaders and the performance of the community. They identified the involvement and enthusiasm of the leader and knowledge experts in the community as critical factors. As a result, the company now examines the leaders of knowledge sharing communities in an audit process: “We think that community leaders and…experts are very important to the performance of the communities. You need the right person in the community lead and [expert] role. You will find that the whole community will be performing based on the commitment and involvement of the leader.” [Knowledge Manager, Company H] A principal indicated similar occurrences in Company I. After discussing an office that was not engaging in the same knowledge sharing behaviors as other offices, he indicated that it comes down to the leaders; if the leaders are well-liked, respected, and engage in knowledge sharing behaviors, others will follow their lead and emulate these same behaviors. They will see it as necessary for career advancement. If the leaders do not share their knowledge and do not encourage others to do so, it will appear to not be important to the firm, and employees will hoard their knowledge.

Peer Recognition People like to be recognized for their efforts and contributions to the organization. One program manager from Company L indicated: “So its back to recognition—we all love recognition in whatever shape or form it comes in—that is what motivates people.” Although some people appreciate a simple “thank you”, some organizations create peer-recognition programs that seek to recognize individual knowledge sharing efforts. These programs highlight the accomplishments of ideal employees to help create the norms and culture the organization strives to achieve. They have found that this recognition is even more important and powerful when employees are recognized for these efforts by their peers. Company I recognizes outstanding employees by placing an award on their personal profiles within the knowledge management system. The team leading the knowledge management initiative believes that the peer-to-peer-recognition system is the best way to promote knowledge sharing behaviors. This kind of status recognition accorded to members of a “natural community” has been found to be equally or more effective than financial incentives for employees to formalize and share their knowledge (Moore 1999). One of the frequently mentioned barriers to sharing knowledge is that people believe knowledge is power. Peer-recognition awards and programs that recognize employees’ contributions to the organization’s knowledge is one way to mitigate this barrier. In fact, the ability of formal knowledge management systems to recognize individual efforts is one of their greatest advantages. As opposed to sharing knowledge through word of mouth in which the initiator of knowledge becomes “lost in translation”, these programs clearly identify knowledge contributors. A knowledge management director from Company F indicated: “We observed that people are very proud when they find a document or knowledge they submit when it has their names. So when their name is attached to it, we are very comfortable sharing… everyone knows that it is coming from you, then everyone will know it came from you and you will be rewarded and recognized for it.” Others felt that sharing their knowledge would make them more recognized and valuable to the organization. An executive from Company I replied: “If people think about it long enough and they experience it, they realize that what really makes a person valuable is if they share their knowledge and others recognize them as a source of knowledge. I’m getting recognition and I’m getting people that want to talk to me and share these things because I share these things and know these things.” Honoring Knowledge Sharing Commitments Cialdini (1993) indicates that once people commit to a cause, they are more likely to continue to honor and sustain that commitment. Persuasion experts have shown that this is particularly true if people have voluntarily but explicitly stated their commitment either verbally or in writing (Cialdini 1993; Cioffi and Garner 1996). In other words, people want to appear consistent to others. Having made their intentions to share their knowledge explicit, people will want to live up to these intentions and honor their commitment. Although it did not appear to be intentional, a few of the companies with more formal knowledge management initiatives required commitment from various employees and community leaders as part of their knowledge management programs. For


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instance, Company I has an intense and explicit process to create and deploy a community within the organization. The preparation for community deployment takes a considerable amount of time and effort and involves several explicit steps. The leadership wanting to develop a community must prepare a charter and undergo a series of readiness assessment meetings. They must prove that they have an existing network of people, available leaders, executive support, resources, and business objectives. In addition, the community leaders and knowledge managers are required to commit to keep the material up-to-date and remain active within the community. These formal steps help to ensure that the leaders of the community will honor their commitments and ensure that the community performs to their stated expectations. In addition, the peerrecognition awards help to increase people’s knowledge sharing behaviors. For instance, the employees who are recognized for sharing their knowledge through the peer-recognition program have received awards that are visible throughout the organization. The people who receive these awards wish to remain consistent with the knowledge sharing behaviors for which they were awarded. Therefore, they continue to share their knowledge with others, often more than before they received the award. Perceived Value and Uniqueness of Intraorganizational Knowledge People value what they perceive to be rare (Cialdini 2001). In other words, as knowledge becomes less available, people perceive it to be more valuable. This principle falls in line with prior findings by Menon and Pfeffer (2003) that employees prefer external knowledge to internal knowledge because it is different and uncommon. Responses coded to this category focused on the uniqueness and perceived value of the company’s knowledge, the experts employed by the company, and/or the company’s knowledge management program. In other words, people indicated that they used their company’s knowledge management program because (1) the knowledge of their peers was unique and could not be found elsewhere and/or (2) the company’s knowledge management system was unique and not an integral part of other organizations. They wanted to capitalize on the rare opportunity to obtain knowledge from their peers or through the organization’s program and, as a result, were more likely to use the system and share knowledge within the organization.

Implications Understanding the reasons why employees share their knowledge can help to develop organizational strategies designed to target these motivations. This section offers suggestions to industry on potential strategies to increase knowledge sharing. In line with previous research, resources, both at the individual and organizational level, were often a constraint to share knowledge. Although most organizations cannot dedicate specific billable time for employees to share their knowledge, they must be cognizant of not overloading their employees to the point in which they simply do not have the time and energy to help their colleagues on other projects. Altruistic motivation was also mentioned as a reason why people share their knowledge. Not every employee will be intrinsically motivated to share their knowledge; however, organizations can explicitly look for this trait in interviews and reference checks and can promote people within the organization who demonstrate this intrinsic desire. Many people focus on rewards when implementing new initiatives. However, most respondents believed that people should not receive rewards for knowledge sharing as it should be an integral part of their job. Although additional research should be done to study the longitudinal effects of rewards for sharing knowledge within the organization, these results indicate that organizations should focus on social rewards and peer recognition more than token or monetary rewards for these efforts. However, many respondents indicated that their companies had a global bonus and incentive structure that encouraged them to share knowledge across geographic, project, and group boundaries. Companies that base monetary compensation on the overall performance of the firm incentivize employees to look beyond their specific project to help other project teams and regions reach their goals. Therefore, a global incentive structure may help to increase knowledge sharing beyond project and geographic offices. The relative frequency of responses showed that the employees interviewed shared their knowledge primarily because of social motivations. In particular, corporate cultural norms and reciprocity were the most frequently mentioned reasons for sharing their knowledge. As a result, organizations should consider these social motivations when implementing knowledge management initiatives and strategies. Table 4 provides suggestions for organizational strategies that may help address these social motivations. It lists the social motivation, suggested strategy, and reasoning.

Conclusion Note Regarding Coding Results The total number of responses in Table 3 increased from the total number of responses in Table 2. This is because of the fact that many of the social motivation references had reasons that overlapped categories. For instance, in the same story, one respondent indicated that he was motivated to share knowledge because his peers were sharing their knowledge and he wanted to reciprocate this favor; that because his peers were sharing their knowledge, it became a social norm and part of the company culture; and that the leaders demonstrated and promoted these behaviors. “It’s partly giving back and it’s partly to do with the culture, you know, the fact that it’s just how people are expected to work, and it’s partly to do with the leadership.” [Project Manager, Company J] This reference was coded to three categories within social motivations.

Many knowledge management initiatives fail to meet their intended goals. Although reasons vary, many of these failures appear to be a lack of focus on the individuals who will be sharing their knowledge as part of these initiatives. In general, knowledge management scholars have focused on macrolevel constructs and relationships at the organizational level, which have advanced knowledge indicating the importance of technology, communication strategies, resources, and other issues for knowledge sharing. However, wide gaps remain in the understanding of microlevel constructs and relationships between the microlevels and macrolevels. This study began to address these gaps by focusing specifically on employee motivations for sharing knowledge. A total of 48 employees within 13 different engineering, construction, and real estate development firms were asked open-ended questions regarding their reasons and motivations for sharing knowledge. Because this questioning allowed respondents to answer without constraints, reasons for sharing knowledge moved beyond altruistic


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Table 4. Suggested Organizational Strategies to Increase Social Motivations for Knowledge Sharing


Social motivations

Recommended organizational strategies

Mimicking leader’s behavior

Promote people who engage in knowledge sharing

Conformity to organizational Culture and norms

Promote norms of knowledge sharing within the corporate culture through training, mentorship programs, and communications highlighting peer accomplishments and success stories Enable employees to recognize their peer’s knowledge sharing efforts through peer-recognition awards Establish mentoring programs, peer reviews, and other programs in which people are required to interact and provide advice to their peers Encourage employees to voluntarily and explicitly commit to knowledge sharing or to managing portions of the knowledge management program

Peer recognition

Reciprocity

Honoring a commitment

intentions and extrinsic awards to social motivations, which had the highest relative frequency of responses regarding reasons employees shared their knowledge. These social motivations included compliance to corporate norms, feelings of obligation to reciprocate, desire to mimic the behavior of leaders, peer recognition, honoring knowledge sharing commitments, and high perceptions of value for the organization’s knowledge and processes. These results increase understanding of microlevel employee motivations and their relationship to macrolevel organizational knowledge sharing outcomes. This moved beyond personal factors, altruistic intentions, and macrolevel organizational resources and incentives to uncover social motivations for sharing knowledge. In addition, this work extended past work by focusing primarily on what facilitates knowledge sharing instead of the barriers to knowledge sharing. Finally, after analysis, many of the categories of social motivations that emerged were aligned with social influence factors identified by persuasion experts, including reciprocity, social proof, and commitment and consistency (Cialdini 1993, 2001). This helps to extend the persuasion literature into the field of knowledge management and can offer insights into organizational strategies that may help to increase knowledge sharing by individuals. This research was exploratory in nature to increase understanding of motivations for knowledge sharing by allowing open-ended responses to interview questions. The research followed case study protocol: it addressed construct validity by having multiple sources and collecting documentation that confirmed interview responses; it addressed validity concerns by allowing the results, i.e., knowledge sharing motivations, to be replicated across individuals and companies and by enfolding literature into the analysis and discussion of the results; and it addressed reliability concerns by keeping detailed records of the coding analysis and having a second reviewer cross-check the coding to ensure proper fit within the categories. Although this method increased understanding of microlevel constructs and microlevel to macrolevel relationships, it also has limitations that future work can address and expand on. Specifically, the open-ended questioning allowed respondents to

Reasoning People will emulate the behaviors of those they like and respect; knowledge sharing will be an expectation for promotion and develop into a corporate norm People will conform to the corporate culture and norms practiced by their peers

People enjoy recognition for their knowledge and knowledge sharing; peer recognition is powerful Encourages future obligations between employees and across regions within the organization People want to honor their commitments and will remain involved in the knowledge sharing initiative

answer without constraints, which enabled new motivations to emerge; however, responses were analyzed according to relative frequency. As a result, respondents were not forced to rate or rank these factors to determine what factors motivated them the most and least to share their knowledge. This type of data collection is also time intensive, which limited the number of people that could be interviewed. Future research could use survey methods to expand the quantity of respondents and provide rankings of the importance of the motivating factors discovered in this research. The relative frequency of responses was fairly consistent across company type and location. Exceptions included more responses regarding the importance of extrinsic global incentives for real estate development firms than contracting or engineering firms and a slight increase in social motivations to share knowledge on the basis of feelings of reciprocity for respondents in Asian versus European-American headquartered organizations. Expanding the quantity of respondents will allow additional comparison on the basis of company type, i.e., engineering firm, and location, i.e., European-American versus Asian. Additional research also needs to be done to better understand the relationships between microlevels- and macrolevels of knowledge sharing. For instance, research could determine if organizational strategies designed to increase employee motivation for knowledge sharing eventually increase employee motivation and, ultimately, increase intraorganizational knowledge sharing. Variables must also be studied in relationship to one another; for instance, future research needs to examine combinations of organizational technologies, processes, and strategies to determine outcomes.

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