The Influence of Ethical and Self-Interest Concerns on Knowledge Sharing Intentions among Managers: An Empirical Study

Knowledge sharing recently has been an issue capturing the attention of both academic researchers and practitioners. When organizations introduce knowledge management and wish employees to share knowledge, conflicts may arise owing to individual differences in self-interest and ethical considerations. If knowledge is controlled by individuals, then sharing knowledge with others is assumed to be an ethical behavior. However, the question of whether employees are glad to share knowledge with others from self-interest concern still needs to be explored. This study uses an empirical survey to describe individual behavior within organizations regarding knowledge sharing decisions. Introduction Knowledge management developed from the need to capture, catalogue, preserve the knowledge that is part of organizational memory and typically resides within the organization in an unstructured way (Gupta et al., 2000). The objective of knowledge management is to support the creation, transfer, and application of knowledge in organizations (Alavi & Leidner, 2001). Knowledge management recently has been a key issue, capturing the attention of both academic researchers and practitioners (Almashari et al., 2002). Knowledge can be divided and conceptualized into explicit and tacit knowledge. One of the goals of organizations is to convert tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge and transform individual knowledge into organizational knowledge (Inkpen and Dinur, 1998; Ruppel and Harrington, 2001). Organizations wish to convert tacit into explicit knowledge because explicit knowledge could be codified and transferred more easily than tacit knowledge. That is, an important goal of knowledge management is to foster knowledge conversion and sharing within organizations. This knowledge sharing and dissemination transforms individual knowledge into organizational knowledge. Consensus regarding the nature of knowledge management remains elusive. When knowledge management is viewed as a process rather than an asset, the emphasis is on establishing an appropriate workplace environment for enabling and facilitating knowledge, both tacit and explicit knowledge, rather than on knowledge itself. Knowledge sharing is not always an easy task (Hendriks, 1999). In some situation, it is a task easy to say but hard to implement. Information technology may be one key to build such an environment, but the ability of organizations to use technology to share knowledge depends on employee enthusiasm (Ruppel and Harrington, 2001: p. 38). Knowledge management is a product combining human and information technology (McDermott, 1999: p. 105). The adoption of new knowledge management methods is facilitated by innovations in information and communication technology collapsing time and space boundaries (Gupta et al., 2000). Internet, Intranet, mobile telecommunications, and other communication technologies have initiated knowledge sharing efforts because they facilitate the easy sharing of document-level information and tacit knowledge. However, the relative ease of these approaches does not guarantee their success. Behavior or management issues thus are as important as technological issues for knowledge management. Much knowledge is controlled at the level of individual workers. Organizations may even be uncertain regarding the existence of a specific piece of knowledge, or may be unsure whether certain knowledge is still hidden in the mind of workers when that knowledge is tacit rather than explicit. When an organization introduces knowledge management and requests that employees share their knowledge with others, possible conflicts may arise because of different self-interest and ethical considerations. Organizational norms regard information sharing as "usual, correct, and socially expected work place behavior" (Constant et al., 1994: p.404; Jarvenpaa and Staples, 2001: p. 153). If knowledge is under the control of an individual employee within an organization, that employee is said to be obliged to share that knowledge with others. …