Intra-firm knowledge sharing barriers: state of the art

Knowledge management has been identified as a practice for rapidly and effectively adapting in ever-changing environment. Within KM, knowledge sharing is considered a critical process for innovation generation and organizational efficiency. Indeed, the knowledge transfer process is often obstructed by the presence of barriers. Several factors has been identified by researchers; however literature lacks of a comprehensive review and categorization of these barriers. The paper analyzes the results of the researches on intra-firm/institution knowledge transfer in different disciplinary areas. The barriers/facilitators are categorized under five main dimensions: nature of knowledge, psychological, social, organizational and technological factors. The context-specific and complex nature of knowledge sharing fosters the proposition of a new theoretical model for knowledge sharing studies