How to reap the benefits of knowledge sharing: An empirical investigation of knowledge utilization

The changes occurred in the competitive environment over the last decades have highlighted the relevance incorporated in the knowledge resources, thereby leading firms to adopt organizational forms more likely to facilitate knowledge exchange and learning. Despite this, knowledge still resides in humans’ minds, so knowledge management strategies should primarily account for motivational factors affecting individuals’ behaviours. In this regard, this paper argues that organizations should be aware of the dynamic relationship that links intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, i.e. their crowding effect. Moreover, although the phenomenon of new organizational forms inspired several researches, little work on how it relates to intra-organizational knowledge processes exists. In particular, even though the importance of organizational forms in facilitating employees’ orientation to share knowledge with other is quite acknowledged, our understanding about how the joint effect between structure-level factors and motivation-based factors affects employees’ knowledge sharing behaviour is still limited. Building on prior literature highlighting the impact of the dynamics of motivation on new organizational forms (Osterloh et al. 2002), I aim at extending this field of research by placing emphasis on the management of motivation as a source of influence on the relationship between organizational forms and employees’ knowledge sharing behaviours. Accordingly, my purpose is to address the following research question: “how do motivation crowding effect and new organizational forms jointly influence intra-organizational knowledge sharing processes?”.