Convey or conceal? How operations managers make sense of sharing knowledge in multi-plant networks

Knowledge sharing across dispersed factories is a key performance lever for global manufacturers, yet we know little about how operations managers understand it and what drives their participation in this activity. Prior research emphasizes structural mechanisms and unit-level antecedents of knowledge sharing, while largely neglecting the individual-level meaning-making processes that shape it. This study addresses this gap by investigating how operations managers make sense of sharing their plant's knowledge with peer units. Using a qualitative interpretive approach, we analyze interviews with 26 operations managers. Drawing on self-determination theory, we conceptualize a motivational scaffolding that emerges from managers' interpretations of three contextual factors: the unit's role, its strategic priorities, and the network's collaborative culture. These interpretations give rise to distinct motivational paths, or scaffolds, that evolve as managers move from externally regulated to more self-endorsed forms of motivation. Sharing behaviors are gradually reframed: first as a duty and compliance, then as strategic alignment, and ultimately as personal and collective growth within the network. For managers, our findings can help anticipate the limitations of top-down knowledge-sharing mandates and inform the design of interventions better attuned to operations managers' lived realities. For scholars, we contribute to the knowledge-sharing literature with a behavioral lens: we explain how operations managers' framings of tensions could affect sharing actions in production networks.