Factors Affecting Knowledge Sharing Behaviour

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Weblogs or blogs, refer to web pages that incorporate regular posts about a particular topic, current events or the expression of personal thoughts. They are typically maintained individually, but also allow multi-person updates. Features such as archival, search and categorisation capabilities help in organising and retrieving content. They incorporate two different modes of communication: one with the blog audience through the posting of comments, and the other with the blog author via e-mail, for example. Blogs do allow their users to engage in social interaction through posting and commenting; at the same time, the owners have the full ability to control the communication flows (i.e. to introduce important topics, to edit and to remove comments). Furthermore, they provide links to external resources and other blogs.

In this era of Web 2.0, many people are keeping blogs for sharing their ideas, their feelings or their hobbies as a way of showing themselves. Innovations in web-based technology have generated new channels for communicative purposes. Blogs provide organisations a unique opportunity for both formal and informal knowledge sharing. Blogs have emerged as an innovative tool for sharing information and knowledge, and they command significant interest from information technology (IT) users as well as providers. Recently, there has been a dramatic proliferation in the number of blogs; however, little is published about what motivates people to participate in blog activities. This study establishes a research framework to provide an understanding of the factors affecting knowledge sharing among bloggers working in IT industry. A survey of 100 blog participants was conducted. The research results indicate that bloggers’ trust, strength of social ties, creativity, privacy concerns and reciprocity all have a positive effect on their knowledge-sharing behaviour.

Key words: bloggers, blogs, information privacy, knowledge sharing, trust.

INTRODUCTION

A blog is defined as a chronological publication of personal thoughts and web links (http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/blog/). Blogs have gained a lot of popularity among Internet users as a useful communication tool. The Pew Internet and American Life Project survey in 2008 reported surprising statistics that 40% of adult Internet users in the United States have blogs. Blogs have been discussed lately as an innovative knowledge sharing technology for knowledge management. Functions such as permanent links, trackback, RSS and comments enable bloggers to be interactive and allow people to more actively participate in information and knowledge generation (Brady, 2005). On the most personal level, Blogs play a significant role in sharing information, knowledge and photos among extended family members (Tee, Brush, & Inkpen, 2009).

Blogs can encourage blog users to share their knowledge. In the education field, blogging is integrated as an online education tool (Farmer & Bartlett-Bragg, 2005). The availability of free blogging software and the fact that no special skills or knowledge are needed to use such software allow blogs to provide new opportunities for knowledge management as well as marketing for firms (Lang, 2005).

Early blogs did not seem to fit into an organizational knowledge management system. They have focused on personal usage such as personal journals advocating personal political views or chronicling personal daily events (Ojala, 2005). However, blogs have been receiving attention as a useful knowledge sharing tool in the context of knowledge management work environment. Blogs can encourage members to share their knowledge. In the field of education, institutions and many individual teachers have integrated blogging into their online educational strategies to improve their teaching effectiveness (Farmer & Bartlett-Bragg, 2005). Blogs are suitable tools for supporting lifelong learning. Learners can record thoughts and experiences over time, build and maintain connection with peers, compile resources, post useful memos and create a body of knowledge representative of personal growth and achievement by blogging (Cameron & Anderson, 2006).

However, adopting blogging technology alone does not result in successful knowledge management in an organization. Participation in creating and sharing knowledge through blogs should be followed by adopting blogging technology in the organization in order to achieve successful knowledge management.

Organizations usually consider technology infrastructure to be the most important component contributing to the success of knowledge-intensive projects, which leads to a tendency to focus only on the technological factors when they introduce knowledge management systems. In reality, because users’ knowledge-sharing behaviour is occurring via a social process, implementing knowledge management technology without consideration of social and environmental factors may set up these projects for failure. The behaviour of acquiring and sharing knowledge ultimately connects people together. Blogs allow for the gathering, codifying, and storing of knowledge and provide links among sources of knowledge. For the successful utilization of blogs as part of a knowledge management system, it is critical for organizations to understand the value of blogging knowledge and skill and to note that a blog’s value does not come from the technology itself, but rather from its contents.

Studies have also indicated that most blog readers and creators are young, affluent males with high online tenure and that they are loyal online shoppers. Bloggers also value the information in blogs. Thus, businesses and organizations are looking for ways to exploit blogs. For example, to increase the effectiveness of online ads, Google has utilized the uniqueness of each blog and tied its AdSense products to the individual blog. Companies such as Nike and Paramount Picture also advertise through selected blogs as new way to reach potential customers. In fact, the subject-focused nature of blogs has grouped Internet shoppers with similar interests, making it easier to search for targeted customers.

However, despite the great political and cultural influences and possible economic returns, it takes much effort to start and maintain an ‘‘active’’ weblog, which not only needs a host (blogger) to update the content regularly, but also requires blog readers to visit and frequently interact with it. Many blog sites have been abandoned soon after their creation. The Perseus reported that they found that 66% had not been updated in two months. Moreover, attracting blog readers was an even harder task: indeed, on average a blog reader spent less than 2 min reading a blog.

Prior studies have focused on the effect of either basic human motives such as sense of achievement, affiliation, and power, or characteristics that enable a sharing culture such as fairness, identification, and openness in driving knowledge sharing in online communities. These are primarily individualistic traits. In contrast, the present study relies on constructs such as trust, reciprocity, social ties, attitude, and privacy, which are dependent on the quality of interactions fostered by the blogging environment, including both the platform and the community. Such interactions between blog authors and blog responders collectively form a social network called the blogosphere.

DEFINITION OF KNOWLEDGE SHARING

Knowledge Sharing is defined as the extent to which knowledge is being shared, Shapira, Youtie, Yogeesvaran and Jaafar (2005). Knowledge Sharing refers to the "process of capturing knowledge or moving knowledge from a source unit to a recipient unit" (Bircham - Connoly, Corner and Bowden, 2005). Knowledge Sharing is "a process whereby a resource is given by one part and received by another and for sharing to occur, there must be exchange" (Sharratt and Usoro, 2003). Knowledge Sharing refers to the exchange of knowledge between at least two parties in a reciprocal process allowing reshape and sense-making of the knowledge in the new context (willem, 2003). Knowledge is defined as a justified belief that increases an entity's capacity for effective action (Huber 1991; Nonaka 1994). Knowledge may be viewed from several perspectives (I) a state of mind, (2) an object, (3) a process, (4) a condition of having access to information, or (5) a capability. Knowledge has been described as "a state or fact of knowing" with knowing being a condition of "understanding gained through experience or study; the sum or range of what has been perceived, discovered, or learned" (Schubert et al. 1998)

LITERATURE REVIEW AND CONCEPTUAL MODEL

KNOWLEDGE SHARING AND TRUST

Without trust in those who impart knowledge, different kinds of knowledge cannot be properly acquired or distributed. Developing trust in both the technical aspects of the Internet and the human community behind it is the first step needed for users to participate in a knowledge-sharing relationship. Mutual trust needs to be established as a precondition for the effective exchange of knowledge. Specifically, the trustworthiness of the information and knowledge exchanged through this medium depends on the information quality. On blogging Web sites, trust is usually built on the basis of the reliability of the information provider.

In previous research, trust has been found to facilitate online information transaction decision making. Extending this notion to the blogosphere, to enhance the ability of a blog to be a knowledge sharing platform, it must be recognized that trust is of great importance, especially given the virtual anonymity of the online world and the diminished ability of bloggers to evaluate the veracity of the information being relayed.

Trust has been discussed as a multidimensional concept. The research of Chai and Kim examined the direct effect of trust on bloggers’ knowledge sharing along different dimensions, including trust in bloggers and trust in blog service providers. In this research, while I include the following three trust dimensions—trust among bloggers, trust in blog service providers, and trust in information and knowledge—in contrast to Chai and Kim [21], the dimensions of trust in this model are subsumed within a broader trust artefact and evaluate the impact of this overall trust on bloggers’ knowledge-sharing behaviour and also explore its gender implications.

In the blogosphere, interactions between two or more parties—the various blog authors and the blog responders—require interpersonal trust. Bloggers need to have a belief in other bloggers’ goodwill. To ensure fruitful knowledge exchanges online, they need to believe that other bloggers participating in knowledge transactions will not take advantage of them even though opportunities to do so may arise. Thus, trust among parties who participate in knowledge transactions is an important factor affecting knowledge transfer in society.

In the online environment, institutional trust has been proposed as an important factor influencing information exchanges. Institutional trust provides impersonal structures such as technical standards and technical mechanisms to both parties, thereby ensuring successful communication transactions. If users feel assured about the success of their transactions based on situational cues such as an explicit privacy policy, third-party certification, and programs such as BBBOnline and e‑Trust, their trust in the e‑vendor will increase.

Choudhury and Karahanna extend McKnight et al.’s framework to suggest that trust is a multidimensional concept composed of trust in structural assurance and informational trust. According to these authors, informational trust is defined as a user’s beliefs about the reliability, credibility, and accuracy of information gathered through the Web. Users’ belief about the trustworthiness of the information and knowledge gleaned from a blog site is a critical factor in persuading users to provide their information on the Web site. Bloggers obtain information and knowledge through experience with other blog pages. An increase in trust in information and knowledge acquired from the blogosphere may, in turn, induce further knowledge exchanges in the blogosphere.

This research hypothesizes that bloggers take into account the presence of strong privacy policies and information security functions on Web sites as a sign of structural assurance. This factor positively influences their participation in the knowledge-sharing process on blogs. In addition, trust in other bloggers indicates interpersonal trust. If bloggers have a higher level of trust in other bloggers, they will share more knowledge with other bloggers.

This paper argues that a positive relationship exists between bloggers’ knowledge-sharing behaviour and their level of trust. I expect that the trust of bloggers, as measured along these dimensions, will increase their knowledge sharing in the online social networking community.

This relationship leads to first hypothesis,

Hypothesis 1a: Bloggers’ trust is positively associated with their knowledge sharing behaviour.

Hypothesis 1b: Bloggers’ trust in information is positively associated with their knowledge sharing behaviour.

Hypothesis 1c: Bloggers’ trust in blog is positively associated with their knowledge sharing behaviour.

KNOWLEDGE SHARING AND RECIPROCITY IN BLOGS

Falk and Fischbacher identify reciprocity as "a behavioural response to perceived kindness and unkindness, where kindness comprises both distributional fairness as well as fairness intentions". From the knowledge-sharing perspective, reciprocity is fair mutual knowledge exchange behaviour. It is the degree to which an individual believes that he or she can improve mutual relationships with others, and positively affects attitudes toward knowledge sharing. In the online network environment, reciprocity has been shown to increase knowledge sharing.

In the blogosphere, reciprocity is one significant reason why bloggers post new content on their blogs. Nardi et al. conducted extensive interviews to research the motivation of bloggers. Their results indicate that bloggers expect "a kind of reciprocity" because they read others’ blogs, where they have to make certain contributions by posting their comments. Because of the conversation-like quality of many blogs, which usually tend to have a common thread, reciprocity is greatly facilitated by the very nature of the blogging environment, where the life of a blog is often sustained by the involvement of other bloggers by virtue of their comments and postings. Reciprocity enables individual blogs to evolve. Reciprocity, in this setting, is a mutually fair behavioural response to the helpfulness and kindness of other bloggers in a knowledge exchange. If bloggers expect fair rewarding responses, they will have a greater incentive to share knowledge in blogs. For example, bloggers who believe that their knowledge sharing behaviour will be rewarded by other bloggers’ reciprocal behaviour, in terms of responses to their questions and provision of proper knowledge or information, will be encouraged to engage in more knowledge sharing. Therefore, the hypothesis will be,

Hypothesis 2: Reciprocity is positively associated with bloggers’ knowledge sharing behaviour.

KNOWLEDGE SHARING IN BLOGS AND SOCIAL TIES

Bloggers maintain online social networks in a number of ways. For example, they connect to one another through their blogs when they put links to other blogs as references. They actively post their comments, information, and knowledge when they read other blogs. Bloggers establish an online community by sharing information, news, and other user-created content via RSS (Really Simple Syndication; a Web feed format) and feedback or the comments function. They maintain strong relationships with other bloggers based on their common interests. Indeed, "Web friendship" among bloggers connects each interest group in the blogosphere.

These friendships, in turn, generate peer pressure among bloggers to post and share their knowledge within their interest group. Because Web technology enables people to overcome geographical limitations, there are more opportunities to create new social ties in the blogosphere.

Social ties represent bloggers’ perceived strength of social relationships with other bloggers. These social ties are largely driven by their perceptions about the closeness of their relationships with other bloggers. Such ties may be strengthened (or weakened) over time based on the length and frequency of interaction. Thus, the next hypothesis will be,

Hypothesis 3: Social ties are positively associated with bloggers’ knowledge sharing behaviour.

KNOWLEDGE SHARING IN BLOGS AND ONLINE INFORMATION PRIVACY CONCERNS

Because a blog is a Web-based technology, serious challenges arise for its users in terms of their ability to manage their online identities and lives (e.g., how users can protect their privacy in cyberspace). Many blogs serve as a sort of online personal diary, and many of them contain privacy-sensitive content such as daily diaries, personal photos, and even home or work addresses. This personal information can be easily searched by other visitors owing to the archive-oriented characteristic of blogs.

Sometimes bloggers can face unexpected consequences—such as dismissal from work—because of their postings on blogs chronicling their inappropriate behaviour or negative opinions about their employer or workplace. Moreover, personal information posted on blogs can lead to cybercrimes such as cyber stalking, identity theft, and cyber bullying, all of which can threaten the user’s safety. Thus, information privacy can be of critical importance when it comes to people’s decisions to participate in blogging.

In this study, the paper investigates the influence of information privacy concerns on the bloggers’ knowledge-sharing behaviour. Following the path established by prior research, define online information privacy as controlled or restricted access to personal information in cyberspace. As discussed earlier, bloggers may face various types of privacy invasion in cyberspace due to the very nature of blogs. The link between online information privacy concerns and bloggers’ knowledge-sharing practices is an important aspect of knowledge sharing via blog Web sites. Online information privacy concerns among bloggers will cause them to guard their behaviour and, therefore, might dampen to a great extent the amount and quality of knowledge that they share online. In regard to this issue, the next hypothesis will be,

Hypothesis 4: Online information privacy concerns have a negative relationship with bloggers’ knowledge-sharing behaviour.

TECHNOLOGY ACCEPTANCE FACTORS

Perceived usefulness is defined as the degree to which a person believed that using a blog enhanced his or her performance. Perceived ease of use was defined as the degree to which a person believed that using a blog was free of effort. Additionally, attitude was defined as the user preferences when blogging. Previous studies have confirmed that usefulness and ease of use have significant effects on attitude. In addition, an Internet user would be likely to participate in blog activity because the interacting process yields fun and enjoyment. Teo et al. confirmed that perceived enjoyment had a significant effect on Internet usage. Similarly, many studies have indicated that the use of IT is influenced by perceived enjoyment. Accordingly, the hypotheses are,

Hypothesis 5a: Perceived ease of use will positively affect users’ attitudes toward participating in a blog.

Hypothesis 5b: Perceived enjoyment will positively affect users’ attitudes toward participating in a blog.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY AND RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

Knowledge is seen as an important input in this world, since it allows the development and creation of competitive advantage. This research intends to focus on the knowledge processing aspect with greater emphasis on "Factors affecting knowledge sharing behaviour of bloggers in Information Technology industry in Bengaluru".

This study has the following objectives:

To know the emergence of blogging as a Knowledge Sharing media in today’s world.

To understand the factors that influences people to use blogs to share knowledge specifically in the Information Technology industry.

RESEARCH DESIGN

This research is Empirical and Correlation. Knowledge sharing Behaviour is the dependent Variable and Trust, Social ties, Reciprocity, Creativity and Privacy Concern are Independent Variables. The authoritative articles were used for preparation and offering theoretical principles and research records and field method was employed for data collection and test of hypotheses.

METHODOLOGY

This research uses a structured survey method. The data were collected by author made structured questionnaire that was administered to individuals who had personal blogs and who were working in Information Technology (IT) industry. To ensure the validity and reliability of the survey instrument, a pilot study was conducted. A total of 35 completed surveys were collected during this trial. Based on the results of the factor analysis and the reliability test, unfeasible survey items were dropped.

Subsequently, a large-scale survey was carried out. Respondents were employees working at large multinational corporations in Bengaluru and Mysooru, Karnataka, India. An online questionnaire was prepared using Google documents and this questionnaire was distributed to employees working in IT industry. A total of 100 completed surveys were collected. The response rate was 70 per cent.

After the results of completed surveys were examined, all unsatisfactory surveys were dropped. Unsatisfactory cases included unanswered surveys (e.g., surveys that had answers only for one or two questions) and surveys in which respondents gave the same number for all questions. There were 70 viable cases that were used for data analysis.

MEASUREMENT

To construct the survey instrument, this paper has adopted many of the measurement indicators from prior literature about knowledge management, trust, attitude and information privacy and modified them to fit the blog and knowledge-sharing context. For each measurement indicator, this research uses a five-point Likert scale.

Measurement indicators of online information privacy concerns were adopted from Malhotra et al. and modified to reflect the blog environment. The measurements for each dimension of trust were adopted from prior literature and were adjusted to fit the bloggers of knowledge-sharing behaviours: trust in other bloggers, trust in information, and trust in blog service providers. The measurement of reciprocity was adopted from Bock et al. and modified to reflect the blog environment.

Measurement indicators for social ties came from the research of Nahapiet and Ghoshal and Tsai and Ghoshal. Indicators for bloggers of knowledge-sharing behaviour were adapted from Davenport and Prusak, Hsu and Lin, and Hsu et al. and modified to reflect bloggers of behaviour.

All measurement indicators used in this research are latent variables that are not observables and cannot be measured directly.

Measurement indicators are presented in Table 1.

DATA ANALYSIS

To examine the relationship between Knowledge sharing behaviour and the independent variables, this study analysed the chosen variables using the SPSS software package. To evaluate the reliability of the questionnaire the factor analysis was employed as main components. At first, the reliability tests of using factor analysis were investigated for each variable. The results of Kayzer-Mayer and Bartlett tests showed that the factorial analysis is justifiable.

All factor loadings of 33 standardized indicators were above the ideal cut off level of 0.7, which indicates that the reliabilities of measurement items are acceptable.

To ensure the level of construct validity, the composite reliabilities should be greater than the acceptance level of 0.7. All composite reliabilities of the constructs used in this research model ranged from 0.908 (social ties) to 0.95 (trust), which indicates that this research model ensures construct-level reliability. Cronbach’s alpha for each construct was also checked for the reliability of the constructs (Table 2).

Test results indicated that neither (1) "a single factor will emerge from the factor analysis" nor (2) "one general factor will account for the majority of the covariance among the measures". Therefore common method bias in the data was relatively limited.

RESULTS

H1 is supported by the results of the data analysis. To test whether the above hypothesis should be accepted or rejected Z-test was performed on the data. Z-test was performed since the sample size which was taken was greater than 30. The results of the Z-test are displayed in table 3.

According to the model, trust is a second-order factor reflected by trust in bloggers, trust in information, and trust in blog service providers. Regarding the relative importance of the three dimensions, trust in information has a higher path coefficient and, therefore, is relatively more important than the other three dimensions of trust which is supported by the outcomes of Z-test. The values of Z-test are calculated at 95 per cent level of confidence level or 5 per cent level of significance. At 5 per cent level of significance the value of Z is between + or – 1.69. From table 3, it is evident that the values of Z for trust in bloggers, trust in information, and trust in blog service providers lie in between the required value. Hence the hypotheses 1a, 1b, and 1c are accepted. The next variable is Attitude which explains the perceived ease of use and perceived enjoyment. In broader sense it explains the level of technology acceptance of individuals. From table 3, it is evident that the values of Z lie in between the prescribed value of Z-test. The results show that attitude has significant effects on the intention to use supporting hypotheses 5a, 5b. Hence the hypothesis for the level of technology acceptance or attitude is accepted. The next variable is reciprocity. The results support the hypothesis that was framed that is reciprocity has positive relationship with knowledge sharing behaviour. The results from the table also support the hypothesis that was framed for privacy concern variable. The value of Z-test supports the hypothesis that privacy concern has negative relationship with knowledge sharing behaviour. The results also support that strong social ties has positive relationship with knowledge sharing behaviour. The data analysis results also supported H2, H3, and H4.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS

The significant theoretical impact of this study of knowledge sharing by bloggers derives from its investigation of social capital theory constructs, which is an important factor for understanding IT usage behaviour.

The research confirms that social norms exist in the blogosphere, reflecting the social norms and cultures seen in offline society. First, this paper confirms that offline expected social norms tend to persist in the online blogosphere. The need to establish relationships persists in online communities despite heightened concerns regarding online privacy is an indicator of the strength of the intrinsic urge. Other offline behavioural characteristics can be tested and verified or repudiated in this manner.

Second, this research can inform the application of social capital theory in other contexts. While a limited amount of recent research has explained knowledge sharing in blogs using social capital theory, to date it has not unearthed any differences in the knowledge-sharing motivation of the two genders. The perceived ease of use and enjoyment appeared to be important variables in the context of blogs. Specifically, enjoyment was found to have the most significant influence on attitudes. Additionally, perceived usefulness had no effect on the use of the blog. These results are in line with previous studies, which argued that perceived usefulness played a critical factor only in work-related environments.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

This research results indicate that IT managers and blog service providers could promote adoption and usage of blogs as a knowledge-sharing mechanism. In many cases, organizations are increasingly utilizing information gathered from blogs maintained by internal and external customers to spur new product development and existing product upgrades, to offer targeted marketing and innovative customer service solutions, and to streamline operations. IT managers can apply the results of this study to encourage these customers to share more knowledge among themselves-knowledge that the firm can, in turn, use to offer innovative products and services.

Specifically, this paper concludes that promoting social networking among bloggers by frequent communications and interactions would increase users’ trust as well as knowledge sharing through blogs. For the successful adoption of blog technologies as knowledge-sharing tools for organizations, it is important to provide various ways to induce increased communication and interaction in the system. Augmenting blogs with chat tools serves the superficial need for facilitating greater interaction, which helps establish social ties and, in turn, facilitates greater knowledge sharing. At the same time, these tools can serve a deeper purpose, as a means to privately clarify and confirm blog discussions in real time. This type of communication can help reduce the information asymmetries that might otherwise erode users’ trust and negatively affect knowledge sharing.

The findings underscored the importance of enjoyment. Bloggers should strive to increase participants’ intrinsic motivations such as enjoyment, fun, curiosity, and exploration. For example, the home page of a blog should contain interesting, fresh, fun, and enjoyable information. At the same time, blog-hosting services should continue to develop tools that make creation of innovative contents possible.

Most people recognize blogs as easy publishing tools. The research results also verified that ease of use is an important and influential factor in determining users’ attitude toward using blog. Therefore, blog-hosting service providers should continue to improve user friendliness, making the tools easy to use and accessible.

LIMITATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

The limitations of the study provide some salient ideas for future research. This study should be interpreted and accepted with caution since the survey data had certain inherent limitations. First and foremost, a bias existed because the sample was self-selected. Second, the subjects were blog users in Bengaluru and Mysooru, Karnataka, India. Culture and lifestyle may differ among different countries.

Although this research controlled for blog experience based on sample characteristics, it could not consider education, age, gender, social class and ethnicity, which may influence IT usage behaviour. To generalize these findings, more user characteristics—including race, educational background, age, and geographic area—need to be considered.

Investigating the impact of a blogger’s country of origin would also likely yield interesting results, as the amount of credence given to online privacy may be dependent on the culture of that country. Because ITs globally connect Internet users, investigating cultural differences in IT usage would also provide useful knowledge for successful IT implementation. A recent study indicates that culture is a significant factor in terms of trust. Comparing and contrasting populations from various cultural backgrounds may, therefore, provide useful cues to understanding bloggers’ knowledge-sharing behaviour.