Employees Knowledge Sharing Issue Of Trust In Empirical Research

With the change of business and technology, more and more managers and researchers begin to pay attention to the strategic meaning of knowledge resource to an enterprise. In China, knowledge management has developed from the "aware" phase to the "reusable" phase, and knowledge management has become a focus within the business circles. On the other hand, knowledge management also developed from the mode based on technology management to the mode based on human management. Moreover, knowledge sharing becomes the focus of knowledge management in enterprise today, for knowledge sharing not only improves using efficiency of employee's private knowledge, but also promotes knowledge innovation in enterprise.In the past studies on employees' knowledge sharing, People acknowledged that trust was an important determinant in employee's knowledge sharing decision-making. For example, through a field survey, Standing & Benson (2000, p.343) made a conclusion that trust was very important, and if there was no trust among sharers, no one would share their knowledge with others. Accordingly, this paper explored the problem of trust in the process of knowledge sharing between employees in China.Based on a review on the literatures, the problem of knowledge sharing trust between employees is divided into three sub-questions: the first question is what the dimensionality of the sharing trust construct is, and how they interact with each other? The second sub-question is that how sharing trust affects employee's knowledge sharing decision-making? And the third sub-question is that what the key antecedents of sharing trust are? All the three questions make up of the complete system of the study of the problem of trust in employees' knowledge sharing.Based on theory analysis and filed survey, this paper put forward 30 research hypotheses which were divided into four types. Further more, this paper examined all the 30 research hypotheses through employing the statistical tool SPSS11.5 and AMOS5.0, in which 350 research samples come from Chinese knowledge enterprises through a questionnaire inquiry. The conclusion is summed up as follow:(1) According to Mayer, et al (1995), risk management is the main function of trust. This paper defines sharing trust between employees as a construct characterized by three dimensions based on its function of sharing risk management, which include affect-based trust (ABT), cognition-based trust (CBT), and institution-based trust (IBT). ABT is based on the sharer's affect to the accepter, and CBT is based on the perceived reliability and dependability of accepter, and IBT is based on the favorable knowledge sharing circumstance and atmosphere in enterprise. Further more, with an empirical study, this paper shows that there is interaction with all the three dimensions of sharing trust,and IBT has positive effect on CBT, and CBT has positive effect on ABT, which validates a similar viewpoint of Ford(2001), McAllister(1995), and Rousseau, et al(1998). However, we find that IBT has no any significant effect on ABT, which was supported by Rousseau, et al (1998) .(2) In the study of the relationship of sharing trust and sharing decision, different from conventional research about the construct of knowledge sharing decision, we first explore that knowledge sharing decision is a construct characterized by three dimensions which include sharing content decision, sharing mode decision, and sharing input decision. Secondly, the empirical study shows that sharing content decision affects positively sharing mode and sharing input decision, and does so sharing mode decision to sharing input decision. Thirdly, we find that sharing trusts, including CBT, ABT, and IBT, have important effects on employee's knowledge sharing decision. The result of the study shows that ABT affects positively employee's sharing content decision and sharing mode decision, and CBT as well as IBT has positive influence on all three dimensions of sharing decision. However, the degree of influence is different, and the influence comes from CBT is greater than ABT and IBT. This finding suggests that knowledge sharing is an informal action which is influenced mainly by the perceived reliability and dependability of accepter. For there is risk in sharing action, CBT plays a key role in employee's knowledge sharing decision.(3) In the study of the antecedents of sharing trust, through employing a field survey, we first find the antecedents of sharing trust can be divided into three types which include the characteristics of accepter, the characteristics of relationship of sharer and accepter, and the characteristics of organizational environment. However, this paper discusses six key antecedents among which the personal quality is divided into two sub-antecedents: beneficence and integrity.In the empirical study, we find that the characteristics of accepter, including ability, beneficence, and integrity, have positive effects on sharing trust, which validates Mayer, et al's general trust model. Moreover, this paper shows that accepter's ability and integrity mainly affect the sharer's CBT, and accepter's beneficence affects the sharer's ABT and IBT. On the other hand, the result of the study shows that the strength of ties between sharer and accepter affects significantly the sharer's ABT and CBT, however, the competition between sharer and accepter has negative effect on sharer's CBT. These conclusions prove the research conclusions of Bouty (2000), Schradner (1995), and Tsai (2002), which showed that strength of ties and competition were the key determinations of sharing trust. Finally, in the study of the influence of organizational environment on knowledge sharing trust among employees, this paper shows that organizational justice has significant effect on IBT, and the openness of organizational communication does so on sharer's CBT, ABT, and IBT.In addition, two other important issues are discussed in this paper, which include the control effect of truster's (sharer's) characteristics on his sharing trust, and the mediating effect of trust on the relationship of the antecedents and knowledge sharing decision. The results of the study are as follow:(4) In their studies, Myer, et al (1995) and Jarvenpaa, et al (1998) discussed the control effects of the characteristics of truster on trust. In this paper, we treat sharer's characteristics as control variables, and explore their control effects on sharing trust. Employing Analysis of Variances (ANOVA) and Hierarchical linear regression analysis, we find that sharer's gender, age, and length of service have significant effects on his sharing trust, and sharer's position and education have weekly effects on his sharing trust. For example, in knowledge sharing, female depends on IBT and ABT more than man does, and man has higher level CBT than female does. However, this paper shows that sharer's characteristics as a whole have little influence on his sharing trust, and there are only 4.9%, 7.5%, and 15.4% of variance of sharing trusts, including ABT, CBT, and IBT, which are explained by sharer's characteristics.5) Among all the antecedents of sharing trust studied in this paper, many were thought as critical determinants of sharing decision in past studies, which implies in theory that sharing trust plays a mediating role in the relationship of some antecedents and sharing decision. Employing Pearson correlation analysis and structural equation model analysis, this paper shows that trust plays a full mediating role in the relationship of qualities of accepter and sharer's sharing decision, and it plays a partial mediating role in the relationship of accepter's abilities and sharer's sharing decision. On the other hand, just as Bouty's conclusion, we find that trust has partial mediating effect on the relationship of strength of ties and sharer's sharing decision, but has no any significant mediating effect on the relationship of competition and sharer's decision, which may help to understand the controversy in academia about the role of competition in employee's knowledge sharing decision. Finally, the result of study shows that sharing trust has full mediating effect on the relationship of organizational justice and sharer's sharing decision, but has partial mediating effect on the relationship of organizational communication and sharer's decision.These above conclusions not only reveal some development in theory of knowledge management, but also have significant meaning to knowledge management practice. Based on the results of the study, we put some advice to knowledge management in enterprise of China accordingly.