Knowledge sharing motivation among IT personnel: Integrated model and implications of employment contracts

The existing research literature suggests that six main factors influence the collaborative behavior of workers. Collaborative behavior has a crucial impact on the thriving of an organization and its human capital, being a necessary condition for motivating workers to share and exchange their knowledge. The relevant factors are: the workers' identification with the organization; self, means and external efficacy; human resource management practices; perceived organizational support. While previous studies have dealt with these factors as sub-groups, the current study proposes and tests an integrative model that combines all of them, and adds a new factor: employment contract. The model was validated on IT workers from several sectors.

[1]  A. Bandura.  Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control , 1997, Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy.

[2]  Fred A. Mael,et al.  Social identity theory and the organization , 1989 .

[3]  Thomas H. Davenport,et al.  Book review:Working knowledge: How organizations manage what they know. Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak. Harvard Business School Press, 1998. $29.95US. ISBN 0‐87584‐655‐6 , 1998 .

[4]  Leslie P. Willcocks,et al.  An Empirical Investigation of Information Technology Sourcing Practices: Lessons From Experience , 1998, MIS Q..

[5]  Alexander D. Stajkovic,et al.  Self-efficacy and work-related performance: A meta-analysis. , 1998 .

[6]  Celia V. Harquail,et al.  Organizational images and member identification. , 1994 .

[7]  K. Law,et al.  High-Performance Human Resource Practices, Citizenship Behavior, and Organizational Performance: A Relational Perspective , 2007 .

[8]  Elwood F. Holton,et al.  Strategic Intellectual Capital Development: A Defining Paradigm for HRD? , 2008 .

[9]  Harry Levinson,et al.  Reciprocation: The relationship between man and organization. , 1965 .

[10]  L. Shore,et al.  The Role of Perceived Organizational Support and Supportive Human Resource Practices in the Turnover Process , 2003 .

[11]  Soon Ang,et al.  Turnover of Information Technology Professionals: A Narrative Review, Meta-Analytic Structural Equation Modeling, and Model Development , 2007, MIS Q..

[12]  Jordan Shropshire,et al.  I'm Leaving the IT Field: the Impact of Stress, Job Insecurity, and Burnout on IT Professionals , 2012 .

[13]  Roy Gelbard,et al.  Toward an Ontology of ICT Management: Integration of Organizational Theories and ICT Core Constructs , 2008 .

[14]  M. Brewer,et al.  Who is this "We"? Levels of collective identity and self representations. , 1996 .

[15]  Peter Rittgen,et al.  Handbook of Ontologies for Business Interaction , 2007 .

[16]  R. Eisenberger,et al.  Perceived organizational support. , 1986 .

[17]  R. Eisenberger,et al.  Perceived supervisor support: contributions to perceived organizational support and employee retention. , 2002, The Journal of applied psychology.

[18]  P. Bentler,et al.  Significance Tests and Goodness of Fit in the Analysis of Covariance Structures , 1980 .

[19]  M. Browne,et al.  Alternative Ways of Assessing Model Fit , 1992 .

[20]  D. Eden.  Means efficacy: External sources of general and specific subjective efficacy. , 2001 .

[21]  Christina Ling-Hsing Chang,et al.  The study of the turnover of MIS professionals - The gap between Taiwanese and US societies , 2010, Int. J. Inf. Manag..

[22]  D. Cole.  Utility of confirmatory factor analysis in test validation research. , 1987, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology.

[23]  Roy Gelbard,et al.  Linking perceived external prestige and collective identification to collaborative behaviors in R&D teams , 2011, Expert Syst. Appl..

[24]  Elizabeth George,et al.  One Foot in Each Camp: The Dual Identification of Contract Workers , 2005 .

[25]  Diane B. Walz,et al.  Revisiting the perennial question: are IS people different? , 1998, DATB.

[26]  M. J. Earl,et al.  The Risks of Outsourcing IT , 1996 .

[27]  Bandula Jayatilaka,et al.  A Conjoint Approach to Understanding IT Application Services Outsourcing , 2009, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[28]  Robert Loo,et al.  Assessing “team climate” in project teams , 2003 .

[29]  B. Reich,et al.  Rethinking IT project management: Evidence of a new mindset and its implications , 2009 .

[30]  G. Krogh.  Care in Knowledge Creation , 1998 .

[31]  J. George,et al.  Feeling good-doing good: a conceptual analysis of the mood at work-organizational spontaneity relationship. , 1992, Psychological bulletin.

[32]  J. Barney.  Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage , 1991 .

[33]  Gilad Chen,et al.  Validation of a New General Self-Efficacy Scale , 2001 .

[34]  Yoav Ganzach,et al.  Augmenting Means Efficacy to Boost Performance: Two Field Experiments , 2010 .

[35]  Marjorie A. Lyles,et al.  Managing Tacit and Explicit Knowledge Transfer in Ijvs: The Role of Relational Embeddedness and the Impact on Performance , 2004 .

[36]  Jo Ellen Moore,et al.  One Road to Turnover: An Examination of Work Exhaustion in Technology Professionals , 2000, MIS Q..

[37]  R. Eisenberger,et al.  Perceived organizational support: a review of the literature. , 2002, The Journal of applied psychology.

[38]  David G. Mathiasen.  Groups that work (and those that Don't): Creating Conditions for Effective Teamwork, edited by J. Richard Hackman. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass 1990, 512 pp. Price: $39.95 cloth , 1991 .

[39]  Derek Binney,et al.  The knowledge management spectrum - understanding the KM landscape , 2001, J. Knowl. Manag..

[40]  Detmar W. Straub,et al.  Production and Transaction Economies and IS Outsourcing: A Study of the U.S. Banking Industry , 1998, MIS Q..

[41]  Jason Bennett Thatcher,et al.  IS Employee Attitudes and Perceptions at Varying Levels of Software Process Maturity , 2012, MIS Q..

[42]  Heeseok Lee,et al.  An empirical investigation of KM styles and their effect on corporate performance , 2003, Inf. Manag..

[43]  Urvashi Rathod,et al.  Defining ‘success’ for software projects: An exploratory revelation , 2006 .

[44]  D. Teece,et al.  DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES AND STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT , 1997 .

[45]  Weidong Xia,et al.  Grasping the complexity of IS development projects , 2004, CACM.

[46]  Kweku-Muata Osei-Bryson,et al.  Structuring IS Outsourcing Contracts for Mutual Gain: An Approach to Analyzing Performance Incentive Schemes , 2000, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[47]  C. Garsten.  Betwixt and between: Temporary Employees as Liminal Subjects in Flexible Organizations , 1999 .

[48]  Roy Gelbard,et al.  The interactive effect of team dynamics and organizational support on ICT project success , 2009 .

[49]  M. Hoegl,et al.  Teamwork Quality and the Success of Innovative Projects , 2001 .

[50]  M. Polanyi.  Chapter 7 – The Tacit Dimension , 1997 .

[51]  J. Hackman,et al.  The design of work teams , 1987 .

[52]  M. Lubatkin,et al.  Proposing and Testing an Intellectual Capital-Based View of the Firm , 2006 .

[53]  Sia Siew Kien,et al.  Managing Flexibility in Outsourcing , 2006, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[54]  Mark A. Huselid,et al.  The Impact of Human Resource Management Practices on Perceptions of Organizational Performance , 1996 .

[55]  Chitu Okoli,et al.  Investigating recognition-based performance in an open content community: A social capital perspective , 2007, Inf. Manag..

[56]  Patrick M. Wright,et al.  The impact of HR practices on the performance of business units , 2003 .