An Investigation Of Intrinsic Motivators For Organisational Knowledge Sharing

Large investments into sophisticated knowledge management systems and repositories are not sufficient to transfer the knowledge held by individuals to organizational level. People are often reluctant to share their knowledge for various reasons, and a culture of knowledge hoarding is one of the largest obstacles to knowledge management. Since knowledge is personal, people cannot be forced to share their knowledge. Other ways have to be found to encourage people to voluntarily share their knowledge and support the systems in place. Prior research suggests that intrinsic motivators may be particularly important in encouraging voluntary behaviours such as knowledge sharing. This research-in-progress paper therefore proposes a conceptual model that brings together theoretical insights from motivational research, self-determination theory and the Theory of Reasoned Action to explain the influence of key intrinsic motivators (i.e. autonomy, self-efficacy, meaningfulness and impact) on knowledge sharing. The results are expected to indicate which of the motivators are most important in explaining knowledge sharing attitude, and behaviour