Employees Motivational Factors toward Knowledge Sharing: A Systematic Review

Hani D. Hejazi , Ahmed A. Khamees

Faculty of Engineering &IT, The British University in Dubai, UAE

Emails: hani.hejazi@gmail.com; khamisos@gmail.com

Abstract

Knowledge sharing between employees in positions at different levels in the organization chart is always a big challenge. It is important to study the main factors that affects employees’ knowledge. A number of literature reviews that sheds the light on knowledge management (KM) was conducted, which focuse on the employee knowledge sharing motivations. However, analyzing the knowledge sharing among employees is still questioned and requires further examination. The main objective of this systematic review is to analyze the state-of-the-are KM studies that involved the factors that affect employees’ intention to share their tacit knowledge. In this systematic review, we explored the tacit knowledge sharing and reviewed 115 recent papers. After filtering and reviewing we extracted many factors, then we categorize them into twelve categories: (ordered by most frequent studied), namely: trusting environment, culture, organization encouragement, rewards, Information system, intrinsic motivations, equal opportunities, job security, the community of practice, time pressure, knowledge confidence and accuracy, and years of experience. This systematic review is important to organizations which seek to share, preserve tacit knowledge and experiences, and gain competitive edge.

Keywords: Knowledge Management; Knowledge Sharing; Employee Knowledge Sharing Motivations; Employee Knowledge Sharing Demotivation.