Barriers to Knowledge Sharing for Prosumers and Global Team Employees

The main purpose of this paper is to determine which barriers are significant for prosumers and global team employees, and in turn what can discourage them from knowledge sharing. The main assumption was that prosumers and employees can share knowledge seamlessly, but that very often they are reluctant to do so. It seems to be a challenge for businesses to know which barriers hinder prosumers and employees in sharing knowledge. To find the answer to the main and specific research questions, as well as to present a complete picture of knowledge sharing barriers from the employee and prosumer perspectives, we combined two research methods in our study – qualitative and quantitative. The research process embraced a survey among prosumers and interviews with global team employees. The contribution of this paper is twofold: (1) a knowledge sharing barriers analysis, and (2) a conceptual framework development which presents the common barriers for knowledge sharing amongst prosumers and employees of global teams, to fulfil the research gap extant in the literature