Knowledge sharing and work identity:A qualitative perspective

Despite the continuing interest in knowledge management as a domain, studies concentrating on knowledge sharing are relatively recent. An important aspect of organizational learning and knowledge sharing studies has been based on the idea that through knowledge sharing between individuals organizational learning will occur. However, clear explanation of the process is not available, and the idea that how employees can be encouraged to share is a developing area in the domain of knowledge management studies. The purpose of this paper is to follow employees' knowledge sharing in organizations and to pursue an exploration to find out how these processes are shaped and under what conditions people share more or less. Moreover, the exploration as a link to the human side of knowledge management will be useful, since the current under-representation of the subject has not been supplemented by empirical research able to highlight the process of knowledge sharing activities in the workplace. This paper aims to contribute to deeper understanding of the subject domain by employing the qualitative method of inquiry to portray better insight to underlying factor that is essential to employees' knowledge sharing behavior