International Journal of Knowledge Management and Practices

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Social-Psychological Factors and Knowledge Sharing During Product Development: A Study in India


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1 T. A. Pai Management Institute, Karnataka, India
     

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In this study, we examined relationships between social-psychological factors(SPFs) and knowledge sharing between individuals during product development (PD). More specifically, we examined the influence of three SPFs from the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) - attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control - upon individual knowledge sharing, during PD work. We characterized knowledge sharing two-fold as: codification and personalisation. We then used data from a sample of 284 individuals across 19 PD units of Indian manufacturing organisations to test hypotheses relating the SPFs to knowledge sharing behaviour. A key finding of this study is that attitude does not have a significant association with knowledge sharing but both subjective norm and perceived behavioural control do. The study draws attention to the idea that PD managers must pay careful attention to social-psychological aspects of individuals when they design knowledge management initiatives to improve performance. Future studies can also examine the same question with larger samples and across multiple contexts. A distinct feature of our study is the use of the TPB to study these relationships in the PD context.

Keywords

Product Development, Knowledge Sharing, Codification, Personalization, Social-Psychological Factors, Theory of Planned Behaviour.
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  • Social-Psychological Factors and Knowledge Sharing During Product Development: A Study in India

Abstract Views: 421  |  PDF Views: 2

Authors

Ajith J. Kumar
T. A. Pai Management Institute, Karnataka, India

Abstract


In this study, we examined relationships between social-psychological factors(SPFs) and knowledge sharing between individuals during product development (PD). More specifically, we examined the influence of three SPFs from the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) - attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control - upon individual knowledge sharing, during PD work. We characterized knowledge sharing two-fold as: codification and personalisation. We then used data from a sample of 284 individuals across 19 PD units of Indian manufacturing organisations to test hypotheses relating the SPFs to knowledge sharing behaviour. A key finding of this study is that attitude does not have a significant association with knowledge sharing but both subjective norm and perceived behavioural control do. The study draws attention to the idea that PD managers must pay careful attention to social-psychological aspects of individuals when they design knowledge management initiatives to improve performance. Future studies can also examine the same question with larger samples and across multiple contexts. A distinct feature of our study is the use of the TPB to study these relationships in the PD context.

Keywords


Product Development, Knowledge Sharing, Codification, Personalization, Social-Psychological Factors, Theory of Planned Behaviour.

References