IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/maorev/v14y2018i04p781-825_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Alternative Way to Make Knowledge Sharing Work in Online Communities? The Effects of Hidden Knowledge Facilitators

Author

Listed:
  • Li-Ying, Jason
  • Zhang, Zhinan
  • Long, Qing

Abstract

Some firms use hidden knowledge facilitators (HKFs) to facilitate knowledge sharing among employees within intrafirm online communities. These firms hope for enhanced knowledge sharing outcomes within their organizations without letting employees know that HKFs exist. Yet, the extent to which HKFs’ interventions are effective remains unknown to researchers and managers. Built on the knowledge sharing (KS) literature, this study explores the unique roles of HKFs as moderators between a company and its employees. We develop several hypotheses to test the impact of the quantity and quality of HKFs’ online interventions on several KS outcomes. By analyzing log data of a Chinese corporation's online R&D community, we find that (1) the quantity of HKFs’ intervention has a mostly positive impact on KS outcomes; (2) the quality of HKFs’ intervention has a mixed impact on several KS outcomes, depending on which aspect of quantity is considered; and (3) the quality of HKFs’ intervention also moderates the positive impact of the quantity of HKFs’ intervention in different ways on different intended KS outcomes. This study makes a clear contribution to the literature on knowledge sharing and knowledge facilitation by demonstrating the impact of HKFs on KS outcomes in a Chinese context.

Suggested Citation

  • Li-Ying, Jason & Zhang, Zhinan & Long, Qing, 2018. "An Alternative Way to Make Knowledge Sharing Work in Online Communities? The Effects of Hidden Knowledge Facilitators," Management and Organization Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(4), pages 781-825, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:maorev:v:14:y:2018:i:04:p:781-825_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1740877618000487/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. SZONDI Réka & HÉDER-RIMA Mária, 2020. "Knowledge Transfer As A Condition Of Employee Dedication," Annals of Faculty of Economics, University of Oradea, Faculty of Economics, vol. 1(1), pages 122-132, July.
    2. Bindra, Sunali & Sharma, Deepika & Parameswar, Nakul & Dhir, Sanjay & Paul, Justin, 2022. "Bandwagon effect revisited: A systematic review to develop future research agenda," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 305-317.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:maorev:v:14:y:2018:i:04:p:781-825_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/mor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.