Rethinking Knowledge Sharing Barriers: A Content Analysis of 103 Studies

The current work force will not only lose 3.6 million “baby boomers” by 2020, but also a substantial organizational knowledge. Presently, there is a gap in understanding how to promote effective organizational knowledge sharing due to the limited awareness of factors that inhibit knowledge sharing behaviors. The focus of this article is to explore the most commonly noted barriers to employees' knowledge seeking and knowledge contributing practices and extract potential factors that influence these barriers. A content analysis study is performed on 103 knowledge management articles from ten computer and information science databases. The results demonstrate a clear division between the barriers limiting each specific behavior: knowledge seeking behaviors depend largely on the time availability of knowledge seekers, while poor communication skills and lack of trust appear to be the major inhibitors to knowledge contribution. Three main factors were found to influence these barriers: role conflict, role ambiguity and locus of control. The findings are consistent with the information foraging and social exchange theories. Implications for future research are proposed.