Understanding Knowledge Hoarding in Organizational Work Teams from a Transactive Memory and Social Network Perspective
Abstract
In the current knowledge economy, knowledge sharing is considered to be almost sacrosanct, especially in organizational work teams. There has been ample evidence that elucidates the importance and benefits of knowledge sharing. However, side by side with the increasing sharing of work-related knowledge in today s workplaces is the pitfall of oversharing, which may adversely affect individual and team performance. In fact, research has shown that organizational members in many instances tend to hoard their knowledge from others even when organizational practices are designed to facilitate knowledge sharing. So when and why do work team members hoard their knowledge in the organizational settings? Although there lacks a specific theory that readily offers a direct answer to this question, existing social science theories can and should be advanced to address this critical question. For three decades, transactive memory systems (TMS) research has established a powerful theoretical framework to examine how knowledge is distributed, recognized, shared, and utilized at the dyadic, group, organizational, and inter-organizational level. Unfortunately, to date, TMS research has solely focused on knowledge sharing rather than knowledge hoarding. While knowledge sharing is an integral component of TMS development, appropriate and strategic knowledge hoarding may reduce knowledge overload in the TMS and facilitate TMS development. At the same time, however, excessive and improper knowledge hoarding may impede TMS development and impede effective knowledge management in the workplace. Therefore, there is an imperative need to advance TMS theory to fully understand when and why organizational work team members hoard their knowledge, what work-related knowledge they tend to hoard, as well as how their knowledge hoarding behaviors influence their performance in the work teams and organizations. To achieve these goals, this research proposes to apply a social network perspective to studying the antecedents and outcomes of knowledge hoarding in real-world organizational work teams. Specifically, this research will extend and integrate TMS theory and related knowledge management research to examine the network, contextual, and technological factors that lead to work team members knowledge hoarding behaviors. In addition, this research will evaluate the outcomes of knowledge hoarding by studying the potential beneficial or harmful effects of knowledge hoarding on the performance of the work teams. In response to burgeoning calls for more high-risk high-reward research, this study will collect whole-network (i.e. 100% response rate from each team member) survey data from a minimum of 20 pre-existing work teams. These work teams will be selected from organizations of various industrial backgrounds located in a major metropolitan area of the United States and China (the world s top two economies). The whole-network data will be analyzed by cutting-edge social network analysis techniques, ERGM (Exponential Random Graph Modeling)/p* analysis , to provide statistical insights into the dynamics of knowledge hoarding in organizational work teams. This research is proposed to advance the theoretical development, methodological applications, and practical management of knowledge hoarding in organizational work teams. This research will present a unique exploratorium to combine the advancement of theories and methods that will empower our capabilities in discovering the underlying dynamics of knowledge hoarding and team performance. Finally, this research will offer new and substantive insights into organizational members knowledge hoarding behaviors, which will be beneficial for the enhancement of managerial practices across different organizational environments, including the military settings.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jan 12, 2017
- Source ID
- W911NF1510258
Entities
People
- Chunke Su
Organizations
- Army Contracting Command
- United States Army
- University of Texas at Arlington