The Effects Of Interpersonal Trust On Employee Knowledge Sharing Behavior

In the era of the knowledge economy, knowledge has become an asset considered by many as the main resource for enterprises’competitiveness, development and growth. Enterprise now more than ever rely on knowledge’s ability to create, share, use, accumulate, integrate, and transform the employees’diverse knowledge and past experiences as well as know-how in order to gain competitive advantages in a fierce market environment. Therefore, how the effective management of such knowledge has increasingly become the main focus of the majority of enterprises and management in these enterprises started to build what is know as The Knowledge based enterprise. Knowledge management encompasses knowledge acquisition, knowledge storage, knowledge sharing and knowledge innovation, where knowledge sharing is practically the main focus of enterprises where they are focusing on building knowledge sharing culture in an environment which until recently was more based on individual’s efforts and creativity. Through knowledge-sharing, the enterprise would be able to capture personal knowledge and disseminated throughout the organization and transform it into corporate knowledge, then knowledge will be operated and innovated eventually in the organization. It is anticipated that the building of organizational culture which promote knowledge sharing as well as the organization’s dissemination of such knowledge to all employees who need it would maintain a long-term competitive advantage in the fierce market environment. On the one hand, knowledge sharing is largely dependent on the mutual trust among employees, so interpersonal trust will surely have impact on the employees’ knowledge sharing behavior.This paper combines both theoretical deduction and empirical research and it focuses on the influence of interpersonal trust on knowledge sharing behavior of employees. The paper is organized as follows:(1) The model construction of interpersonal trust affecting the behavior of the employees’knowledge sharing. Based on current literature, the research concluded that knowledge sharing behavior of employees is in no doubt influenced by interpersonal trust among employees; moreover, organizational commitment, organizational conflicts and knowledge sharing willingness could also play a certain role in this process. In view of this, this paper selects several variables, such as interpersonal trust, organizational commitment, organizational conflict, and knowledge sharing willingness. On the basis of concluding the literature of above variables and knowledge sharing behavior among employees, this paper builds a theoretical model which shows the relationship between the interpersonal trust and the knowledge sharing behavior.(2) An empirical study of interpersonal trust on employees’ knowledge sharing behavior. This paper takes employees as the research object and combines it with relevant maturity scale of domestic and foreign. Finally, our results are based on 297 valid questionnaires, which were statistically analyzed with statistical application software and structural equation model to analyze the questionnaires’data. The results shows that:Interpersonal trust has a significantly positive impact on organizational commitment and knowledge sharing willingness, while it has a significantly negative impact on organizational conflict; Organizational conflicts have a significantly negative impact on organizational commitment while organizational commitment could significantly increase the level of employees’knowledge sharing willingness and their knowledge sharing behavior; The employee’s knowledge sharing willingness has a significantly negative impact on knowledge sharing behavior; On the perception of organizational conflict, male employees are superior to female employees, managers are superior to non-managers, and employees who have higher education are superior to employees who didn’t have higher education. On the level of organizational commitment, the undergraduate employees are lower than the employees who graduated from high school.(3) The suggestions to promote knowledge sharing behavior of employees. Combined the results of and empirical analysis, this paper will offer countermeasures from the following several aspects:improve the system of knowledge sharing; establish a corporate culture that pay much attention to knowledge sharing; establish a wide range of communication; psychological guidance for employees.