Performance Appraisal Purpose Orientation And Knowledge-Sharing Intention

In this knowledge-based economy and society, knowledge becomes a valuable asset for individual and enterprises to win. The speeding up of knowledge updating makes it impossible for enterprises to guarantee sustainable competitiveness by only owning knowledge; they must establish a mechanism of knowledge sharing, foster knowledge-sharing environment, to stimulate employees’ knowledge-sharing intention from different aspects. Only in this way, can the enterprise make effective use of existing knowledge and extend new knowledge, to maintain positive position in fierce competition.As one of the most important human resource management practice, performance appraisal should be more able to stimulate employees’ initiative and creativity, and play a more significant role in motivating employees’ knowledge-sharing intention. But in research and practice, there is no clear conclusion whether different purpose-oriented performance appraisal have different impact on employee’ knowledge-sharing intention. Therefore, this research study on performance appraisal purpose orientation’s effect on knowledge-sharing intention and its working mechanism, to explore an ideal performance appraisal module that can effectively promote knowledge sharing. This research can provide reference for theory development and practice.This paper studies the following two questions. The First one is purpose orientation of performance appraisal’s effect on knowledge-sharing intention. That’s, are different purpose orientations of performance appraisal can have different effect on knowledge-sharing intention and how much is it? Secondly, to explore the mediating mechanism between performance appraisal purpose orientation and knowledge-sharing intention. That’s what the psychological activities process is? Following the social exchange theory and integrated with staff-organization relationship perspective, the research proposed a series of hypotheses and empirically verified them by the study of196knowledge staff. We come to the following conclusions:1) Developmental appraisal has a positive effect on knowledge-sharing intention, whereas, evaluative appraisal has a negative effect on knowledge-sharing intention. And by comparison, developmental appraisal’s positive force is much larger than evaluative appraisal’s negative force.2) Emotional commitment plays a mediating role between performance appraisal purpose orientation and knowledge-sharing intention, part mediating precisely. Specifically, developmental appraisal promotes staff’s emotional commitment, and then improves knowledge-sharing intention. While evaluative appraisal restrains emotional commitment, and then reduces employees’ knowledge-sharing intention.This study reveals performance appraisal purpose orientation’s role to knowledge-sharing intention and open the black box. It can guide theory and practice. This research is also a verification and specific application about social exchange theory under China’s cultural background and transition economy, in the areas of human resource management practices and knowledge-sharing theme.