Research On The Effects Of Goal Orientation On Knowledge Donation

In an era of knowledge-based economy the reserve of knowledge andthe ability to use knowledge are very important to a company. So how toimprove employees’ knowledge donation is one of the most critical problemsfacing the organizations. According to the previous studies，psychologicalfactors contribute more to knowledge donation rather than external factors.We posit that psychological factors，including learning habit，sense ofaccomplishment，the pursuit of fame，the pursuit of developmentopportunities，the pursuit of challenging work，interpersonal reciprocity，a sense of responsibility are all affected by an individual’s goal-orientation.But there are only few studies on the effects of goal-orientation to knowledgedonation.The purpose of this paper is to examine how an employee’sgoal-orientation will affect his/her initiative to contribute personal knowledge.We first examine the positive impact of learning goal orientation andperformance goal orientation on achievement motivation，career advancement ambition and knowledge donation. Then we further explore thepositive impact of achievement motivation and career advancement ambitionon knowledge donation. Herein we discuss the mediating roles ofachievement motivation and career advancement ambition between goalorientation and knowledge donation. Finally，organizational contextualeffect is discussed by means of introducing organization trust as themoderator on the relationship defined above.Accordingly a hypothetical model is set up.185sets of questionnaireswere collected for empirical test of the hypotheses developed. The resultsvalidate the proposed model. The results shed some light on how to increasethe individual worker’s knowledge donation within the organization.