Team Communication On Team Knowledge Sharing Mechanisms

With the advent of knowledge-based economy, instead of the traditional production factors such as earth, labor, capital and so on, knowledge has exceeded to be the uppermost economic resource and the dominant source of competitive advantage. Thus knowledge management has been blooming in the both fields of theory and practice. During the process of knowledge management, Knowledge sharing is the most important element. Only through sharing can the knowledge at the individual level be integrated into the organizational level, and then become the core competence of the firm. Team is the bridge between individual knowledge and organizational knowledge, so team is the core platform of knowledge sharing. Accordingly, in practice, team has been widely applied in current enterprises. Therefore, this research of knowledge sharing focused on the team level.Among the numerous factors influencing knowledge sharing of team, communication is the most important element recognized by both the academe and the practical, but is ignored by the researchers. Furthermore, communication is the jumping-off point of all the relationships and behaviors, including knowledge sharing among the team' members from different functional departments. So from the communication perspective, this paper proposed a series of research hypotheses and a theoretical model based on literature review. Following the way of "team communication→team shared mental model (TSMM) and transactive memory system (TMS)→knowledge sharing", the research was conducted with team members of firms through questionnaire and analysis methods such as CITC, a coefficient, correlation analysis, factor analysis, independent- sample T test, ANOVA and SEM to explore the mediating effects of TSMM and TMS and to test all the proposed research hypotheses and theoretical model. The purpose of this research is to explore the mechanism of team communication on team knowledge sharing. The research included five parts as follows:Study 1 is to explore the team communication construct in Chinese culture context. In the previous researches on the communication of knowledge sharing, communication was defined as one dimension. From the communication content perspective, this study divided the team communication content into three dimensions: task communication, personal communication and responsive communication. Empirical study showed that these measurement scales had good reliability and validity. This research found that team task communication explained the most variance of team knowledge sharing, then the responsive communication and personal communication. This conclusion denied the standpoints of the west academe on China that "Guanxi is uppermost in China".Study 2 is to explore the mechanism of team communication on team knowledge sharing. Most current literatures focus on the direct effects of team communication on team knowledge sharing. This study took TSMM and TMS as the mediators to explore the intrinsic mechanism of team communication on team knowledge sharing. The results showed that TSMM and TMS were the partial mediators between team task communication and team knowledge sharing, were the full mediators between team responsive communication and team knowledge sharing, and the TMS were the full mediators between team personal communication and team knowledge sharing. So, team's communication influenced team cognition as well as affection and also had a further effect on knowledge sharing. This research has made advance in the following two aspects: first, from the TSMM and TMS perspective to explore the function mechanism of team communication on team knowledge sharing; second, induced the research of TSMM into practical context.Study 3 is to explore the moderation effects of team communication style for the team communication content on TSMM and TMS. The empirical study showed that there're positive moderation effects of direct communication style for the task communication on TSMM and TMS and negative moderation effects of direct communication style for the personal communication on team TMS. This research fetched up the blank of the moderation effects of team communication style for the team communication content and denied the standpoint of the west academe that Chinese preferred indirect communication style. In addition, this result is consistent with the research of Chinese selfhood characteristic. Therefore, this research also enriched indirectly the theory of Chinese culture.Study 4 is to examine the interference mechanism of bureaucratic, creative and supporting characteristics of organizational culture on the proceeding of team knowledge sharing. Empirical research indicated that there're positive interference effects of low bureaucratic, high creative and supporting characteristics of organizational culture on the proceeding of team knowledge sharing. The past research usually took organizational culture purely as the factors influencing knowledge directly and separately. By carrying out the interaction of organizational culture and other organizational elements, this research pioneered a new route and made the result more practical.Study 5 is to explore the control effects of team members' Confucianism culture and individualism-collectivism oriented value, and other individual characteristic and team/organization characteristic on the TSMM, TMS and KS. This study found that team members with higher Confucianism culture and individualism-collectivism oriented value had higher score on TSMM, TMS and KS. The higher individualism had higher score on the knowledge creation and the higher collectivism had higher score on knowledge transfer. With these findings in mind, the researcher suggests the following practical recommendations for consideration. First, Chinese firms should pay attention to Confucianism culture when studying and acting on western management thoughts. Second, evaluation and premium plan should balance team orientation and individual orientation in setting aims.The results of this exploratory study enriched the theory of team communication, TSMM, TMS and team knowledge sharing. Finally, both the theoretical progresses and practical implications were discussed, as well as the limitations of this study and the directions for future research.