Usefulness, incentives and knowledge management

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of “usefulness” and “incentives” on the joint decision to share and use knowledge objects.Design/methodology/approach – Using an experimental design, the authors explore the effects of different incentive systems, the effect of the usefulness of a knowledge management system on intent to contribute and intent to use knowledge, the effect of personal characteristics, specifically an individual's tolerance of ambiguity, and joint endogeneity of contribution and use along with potential complementarity of usefulness and incentives.Findings – For ambiguity tolerant individuals, an incentive mechanism that rewards the contributor for shared knowledge used by a knowledge user, and the knowledge user for the act of reuse, is more effective than a simpler incentive scheme that merely rewards knowledge sharing when usefulness level is low. Ambiguity intolerant individuals react equally to both types of incentive schemes regardless of usefulness. Ambiguit...

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