Understanding Knowledge Sharing From an Identity-Based Motivational Perspective

Abstract

Research typically adopted a social exchange perspective to suggest that employees share their knowledge with coworkers to reciprocate prior positive treatment to return the favor. We challenge this dominant focus on external motivational sources and adopt an identity-based motivational perspective. Our theorizing is grounded in identity theory and recognizes knowledge-sharing identity centrality as an internal source of motivation for knowledge sharing. We also decipher how employees express their knowledge-sharing identity centrality through self-regulatory mechanisms by incorporating key premises from social cognitive theory. Specifically, we argue that knowledge-sharing identity centrality triggers a self-verification process that facilitates knowledge sharing through knowledge-sharing envisioning and knowledge-sharing self-efficacy. We further argue that the positive effects of knowledge-sharing identity centrality are strengthened by employee self-verification striving. We adopted a multistudy design and conducted two studies to understand why, how, and when employees share knowledge. Specifically, in a within-person field experiment (Study 1), we showed that improving knowledge-sharing identity centrality increased an employee’s daily knowledge sharing via knowledge-sharing envisioning and knowledge-sharing self-efficacy. In a between-person field study with time-lagged data (Study 2), we replicated the within-person findings and further demonstrated self-verification striving as a moderator strengthening the effects of knowledge-sharing identity centrality. Our findings advance research on employee knowledge-sharing motivation, unveiling the internal identity-driven motivation processes. We further provide practitioners with an effective knowledge-sharing intervention.