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Individual variables with an impact on knowledge sharing: the critical role of employees’ ignorance.

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journal contribution
posted on 2015-08-07, 15:05 authored by John Israilidis, Evangelia Siachou, Louise Cooke, Russell LockRussell Lock
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify individual variables with an impact on knowledge sharing and explore the under-discussed construct of employees’ ignorance. This can enhance the knowledge sharing process and facilitate the development of greater intellectual capital. Design/methodology/approach: Eighty-four dependent variables affecting knowledge sharing are analyzed and classified into eleven categories. In addition, the direct effect of employees’ ignorance on knowledge sharing is introduced and empirically investigated in a case study of a multinational organization operating within the Aerospace and Defense industry. Findings: The findings suggest that employees’ ignorance may negatively affect their intention to share knowledge, thus leading to poor decision-making and communication in organizations. Employees’ ignorance could also limit the organizational ability to repel external threats, implement innovation and manage future risks. Originality/value: A classification scheme based on different categories of employees’ ignorance is developed, providing tailor-made recommendations for practitioners facing different types of ill-informed organizational scenarios. Further, the need to shift the emphasis away from the management of knowledge to the management of ignorance is also an important contribution of this paper.

History

School

  • Business and Economics

Department

  • Business

Published in

Journal of Knowledge Management

Citation

ISRAILIDIS, J. ... et al, 2015. Individual variables with an impact on knowledge sharing: the critical role of employees’ ignorance. Journal of Knowledge Management, 19(6), pp.1109-1123.

Publisher

© Emerald

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2015

Notes

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Journal of Knowledge Management and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/JKM-04-2015-0153

ISSN

1758-7484

Language

  • en