Effects of Network Positions of Organizational Members on Knowledge Sharing

조직구성원의 네트워크 위치가 지식공유에 미치는 영향

Improving productivity of knowledge workers is an important issue in the 21st century referred as knowledge-based society. The core key word is knowledge sharing among constituents of an organization. The purpose of this study is to combine the social network position factors with attitude and behavior factors, and develop an integrated research model for the knowledge sharing among members of an organization. This study adopted the integrated theoretical framework based on social capital, self-efficacy, transactive memory, and knowledge sharing. Surveys were conducted to 42 organizational members from a department in a leading IT outsourcing company to empirically test the proposed research model. In order to validate the proposed research model, social network analysis tool, UCINET, a structural equation modeling tool, SmartPLS, were utilized. The empirical result showed that, first of all, organizational members' familiarity network position had significant influence on knowledge self-efficacy and transactive memory capability. Second, knowledge self-efficacy and transactive memory capability affected knowledge sharing intention. Third, knowledge sharing intention also had an impact on the job performance. However, organizational members' expertise network position had no significant influence on knowledge self-efficacy and transactive memory capability. This finding reveals the importance of the emotional approach rather than the rational approach in knowledge management. The theoretical and practical implications on the research findings were discussed along with limitations.