Encouraging knowledge sharing among employees: How job design matters

Nicolai J. Foss; Dana B. Minbaeva; Torben Pedersen; Mia Reinholt

doi:10.1002/hrm.20320

Encouraging knowledge sharing among employees: How job design matters

Nicolai J. Foss, Dana B. Minbaeva, Torben Pedersen, Mia Reinholt^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Human Resource Management

Center for Strategic Management and Globalization

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

342 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Job design is one of the most frequently researched practices in the Human Resource Management (HRM) literature, and knowledge sharing has become an important and heavily researched managerial practice. The links between these practices, however, have received little attention in the literature. We argue that job design matters to knowledge sharing for motivational reasons. Specifically, jobs contain characteristics that stimulate different kinds of motivation toward knowledge sharing, which have different effects on individual knowledge sharing behavior. We develop six hypotheses that unfold these ideas and test them on the basis of individual-level data collected within a single firm. The hypotheses are tested in a LISREL model that confirms that job characteristics, such as autonomy, task identity, and feedback, determine different motivations to share knowledge, which in turn predict employees' knowledge sharing behaviors.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	871-893
Number of pages	23
Journal	HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Volume	48
Issue number	6
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.20320
Publication status	Published - Nov 2009

Keywords

Job characteristics
Job design
Knowledge sharing
Types of motivation

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10.1002/hrm.20320

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Encouraging knowledge sharing among employees: How job design matters

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