دانلود رایگان ترجمه مقاله اشتراک دانش در میان آکادمی های مالزی (سال 2013)

اشتراک دانش در میان آکادمی های مالزی: تاثیر تعهد عاطفی و اعتماد

Knowledge Sharing Among Malaysian Academics: Influence of Affective Commitment and Trust

Abstract

Knowledge resides within a human being and it is hard to be transferred to others. Unwillingness to share is one of the main impediments of knowledge sharing. In a university setting, this situation could be more alarming as universities are knowledge centric organisation. Knowledge sharing will help universities to strengthen its research and teaching activities. Despite the importance of knowledge sharing, many academics still hoard their knowledge. The aims for this paper are (1) to evaluate the influence of these two emotional factors towards knowledge sharing intention; (2) to examine whether the perception of knowledge sharing in public universities differs from private universities. The research model includes the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and the two affective components. In order to examine the research model, a survey was conducted with a total respondent of 545 academics from 30 universities in Malaysia. Multiple linear regression was used to examine the research model. On the other hand, t-test was used to examine the differences between public and private universities. In general, the findings revealed that emotional influence is crucial for knowledge sharing behaviour. The t-test analysis shows that there are significant differences between public and private universities. This paper contributes to the existing literature by evaluating the impact of emotional factors (affective commitment and affective trust) towards knowledge sharing behaviour. It also provides a greater depth of understanding on how knowledge sharing in public universities deviate from private universities. University administrators need to implement policies and activities to strengthen the emotional bonding between academics in order to facilitate knowledge sharing in Malaysian universities. This is exceptionally crucial for private universities as the results shows that knowledge sharing intention is lower than the public universities.

1 Introduction

Knowledge is today seen as one of the ‘most strategically important resource’ that organisations own (Grant, 1996: , p.376). Davenport and Prusak(1998) went one step further by reiterating that knowledge assets due to their intangibility are difficult to imitate and replicate and are therefore more important than tangible resources. Ownership of knowledge assets are thus seen as a source of long term sustainable competitive advantage. In the context of higher education, universities are considered as knowledge based organisations due to their role as the epitome of knowledge development and management. A clear example would be the sharing of knowledge among academic staff, which would enhance the capability and quality of research undertaken by the universities. It is a norm and culture in an academic institution that senior academic staffs share knowledge and expertise with junior academics to improve the symbiotic processes of learning and teaching respectively. In recent years, knowledge management (KM) researchers have shifted their attention from organisational and technological factors to human factors. This is because social and human factors serve as the key to the willingness of an individual to share his or her knowledge. Naturally, humans have high reluctance to share their knowledge; an effective knowledge management process will never take place if individuals are not willing to share what they know. Willingness relies heavily on each individual. Carmen et al.(2011) stated that employees need to feel, identified with, and involved in the particular social organisation for them to share their knowledge. In other words, the stronger the feeling or identification, the higher the willingness to share knowledge. As such, emotional influence on knowledge sharing is important. From the perspective of the workplace, the emotional component should be evaluated from two dimensions of (1) emotional influence towards the organisation, and (2) emotional influence towards other colleagues. Based on these dimensions, the authors proposed to adopt affective commitment towards the organisation and affect-based trust among colleagues as the two central constructs in this study.

The first objective of this paper is to examine the influence of affective commitment and affectivebased trust towards knowledge sharing intention. The theory of planned behaviour (TPB) would be used as the anchor model to predict knowledge sharing intention. Meanwhile the two constructs of emotional influence serve as the antecedents for knowledge sharing intention. The second objective of this paper is to evaluate whether knowledge sharing intention differ between public universities and private universities in Malaysia. Two research questions are addressed as follows:

 Do affective commitment and affect-based trust positively influence knowledge sharing intention?

 Do attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, affective commitment, affect-based trust and knowledge sharing intention differ between public and private universities?