Research On Knowledge Sharing Behavioral Mechanism And Key Factors Of Hydropower Project Employees

Knowledge management is one of the popular research focuses in global management research, but knowledge management is still undeveloped in engineering management and project management field. Meanwhile, as the development of Chinese hydropower projects, enterprises in these projects need their employees to share their personal working knowledge. But there are significant practical gaps between these enterprises and global advanced enterprises. In Order to understand knowledge sharing problems and explore solutions to improve knowledge sharing practice in these enterprises, this dissertation conducts a research on mechanism of individual knowledge sharing, knowledge sharing environment and obstacles in hydropower projects. The data sources of the study include interviews of 35 project management professionals, 50 department questionnaires and 402 individual questionnaires.Based on social exchange theory and theory of planned behavior, the dissertation first analyses knowledge sharing behavior of hydropower project employees and proposes a theoretical framework to explain their knowledge sharing behavior and analyses the special characters of hydropower projects. Then, based on this framework and according to theoretical analysis and empirical research evidences, a research model of knowledge sharing behavior with hypothesizes is proposed. This model includes personal factors such as knowledge sharing motivators and costs, organizational factors such as climate, management attitude, social network and knowledge characters. Using data collected from individual questionnaires, the model is validated by PLS structural equation technique and the results are discussed. With data collected from department and individual questionnaires, knowledge sharing environment factors and obstacles are analyzed by ranking and multivariate statistics. According to the results, the following results and conclusions are achieved:Firstly, a framework to explain knowledge sharing behavior is proposed and a model of knowledge sharing behavior are validated. Factors with significant impact to knowledge behavior, intention, attitude, ability and subject norm are validated.Secondly, knowledge sharing environmental factors and knowledge sharing methods are ranked and a model of the correlations between environmental factors and macro knowledge sharing level are achieved. It is founded that IT system, processes, organizational climate, internal incentive and management support has significantly positive impact to knowledge sharing level of departments and centralization has significantly negative impact.Thirdly, knowledge sharing obstacles are identified and analyzed. It is conclude that knowledge sharing obstacles are mainly from poor knowledge sharing environment and affects of some knowledge sharing obstacles are significantly different among employee groups from different industry types or with different personal factors.Finally, based on research results, framework of management measures to improve knowledge sharing practice in hydropower projects are given, which includes IT application, organizational design, human resource management and personalized measures.The framework and validated model of knowledge sharing behavior build the base of analyzing knowledge sharing phenomena in such projects and the exploration to current status and measures to improve knowledge sharing practice build the base of understanding and solving practical problem. So the study has both academic and practical meanings.