Motivations and Management: Cross-organisational Research into KS and Collaboration by Hareesh Kanchanepally

Motivations and Management: A Cross-Organizational, Exploratory Study of Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing in Workplace

Hareesh Kanchanepally Kellogg College

Dissertation submitted in part-fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of MSc Education (e-Learning) Trinity Term 2011

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

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To Dad

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research is a result of lavish support from certain individuals: Amit Vincent, Santosh Kumar Korthiwada, Abhijit Mukherjee, and not the least Clare Dillon, who not only encouraged but provided guidance throughout. My thanks are well due to Rebecca Chatman, my previous manager, whose encouragement and support paved the way for my studies at Oxford and for this research.

I also am indebted to the support each participant gave, for the odd times they were ready to be interviewed, and for putting up with any technical glitches.

His keen eye for logic, his witty quips, his sharp yet gentle corrections, above all his humane down-to-earthiness, make Dr. Chris Davies the best course supervisor I ever could wish for. I thank him with utmost sincerity for all the support and care. I also thank Dr. Rebecca Eynon for her sessions on Collaborative Learning and future of e-Learning, which in turn provided the sparks for this research. I also thank my e-Learning classmates, err family, for all the support, fun and frolic, and for those great discussions.

Whatever good I am today, is due to my friends and family. I thank Raju, Gautham, and David for putting up with me and not disowning me as I disappeared for months. My thanks are due for Siri, Ashu, Raju bawa for taking care and showering abundant support throughout, and to Sahasra for making my days with her smiles. And hugs to Rachael for not only proofreading, but encouraging me to put my ideas at risk, and for her love.

Mom and dad â&#x20AC;&#x201C; I dedicate this to you, for everything you did that I cannot fit into mere, lame words...

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ABSTRACT

While organisations and educational institutions alike increasingly invest in, and propagate, collaboration and communication technologies, the main objective of seamless knowledge sharing and co-creation remains elusive. To stay competitive and to address the need for collaboration and sharing, organisations devised Knowledge Management methodologies and computer-supported collaborative learning strategies evolved in e-Learning, quite independently. However, the quest for an answer to what factors motivate someone to participate and collaborate in any knowledge-sharing activity has revealed only half-truths. Concurring to the insight that collaboration and knowledge-sharing are motivated, this research, while attempting to bridge the gap between e-Learning and KM strategies, pursued the answer. It adopted an ecological perspective and investigated the factors from organisational, technological, interpersonal, and personal contexts. Based on varied literature review, the research devised a theoretical framework for this exploration. The research adopted a cross-case study methodology and employed semi-structured interview techniques to unearth these factors in their own contexts. The one-hour long interviews with globally-distributed 17 participants from two multi-national organisations were transcribed and explored from the looking glass of the theoretical framework. The exploration revealed that employees do not want to or they do not have time to do anything out of the way of their day-to-day work, and that the collaboration initiatives which are entwined to their immediate business goals attained success. It has also revealed that employees are diverse and they have varied needs and preferences, and that adopting a single strategy of codified or personalised knowledge sharing poses a major barrier to the free-flow of knowledge. While urging the organisations to concentrate on both project-based and process-based knowledge sharing, the research also highlighted the impact of lack of access to key resources, lack of mechanisms to filter the flux of information that floods through the knowledge-sharing portals, and lack of reciprocity and recognition. Most importantly, the research found that the success of any knowledge-sharing initiative is rooted in organisationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s culture and knowledge vision, and that organisations need to not only provide various technologies to suit diverse needs of employees, they also need to communicate, celebrate, and consciously consider the importance of knowledge sharing to remain competitive and inventive.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................................... IV ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................................... V 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 1.4. 1.5.

RESEARCH MOTIVATIONS ..................................................................................................... 1 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES ......................................................................................................... 1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS ......................................................................................................... 2 RESEARCH APPROACH .......................................................................................................... 2 STRUCTURE OF THE DISSERTATION ........................................................................................ 3

2. LITERATURE REVIEW.............................................................................................................. 4 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4. 2.5. 2.6. 2.6.1. 2.6.2. 2.6.3. 2.6.4. 2.7.

FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO INCREASED INVESTMENT IN C&C SOFTWARE ................................. 4 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-LEARNING ........................................................................ 6 HOW E-LEARNING AND KM ARE KNITTED TOGETHER ............................................................. 7 COLLABORATION AND KNOWLEDGE SHARING (KS) AS MOTIVATED ........................................... 8 REVIEW OF EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON MOTIVATION AND KS & COLLABORATION ...................... 12 CONTEXT-BASED CATEGORISATION AND DISCUSSION OF THE LITERATURE ............................... 13 ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXT ........................................................................................................... 13 PERSONAL CONTEXT ..................................................................................................................... 14 INTERPERSONAL CONTEXT .............................................................................................................. 15 TECHNOLOGICAL CONTEXT ............................................................................................................. 16 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - IMPLICATIONS FOR PRESENT STUDY ................................ 17

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.................................................................................................. 19 3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.3.1. 3.3.2. 3.4. 3.5. 3.6. 3.7.

RATIONALE FOR THE RESEARCH AND DESIGN ......................................................................... 19 CROSS-ORGANISATIONAL CASE STUDY.................................................................................. 20 CASE SITES ........................................................................................................................ 21 ORGANISATION A ......................................................................................................................... 23 ORGANISATION B ......................................................................................................................... 23 DATA COLLECTION ............................................................................................................. 24 DATA ANALYSIS APPROACH ................................................................................................ 25 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS ................................................................................................. 26 RESEARCH LIMITATIONS, VALIDITY AND GENERALISABILITY .................................................. 28

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4. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS ..................................................................................................... 30 4.1. 4.1.1. 4.1.2. 4.1.3. 4.2. 4.2.1. 4.2.2. 4.2.3.

ORGANISATION A – CASE REPORT........................................................................................ 30 ALL IN A DAY’S WORK – THE LEARNING TEAM AND ITS TECHNOLOGY ............................................. 30 “MAKE SOMEBODY GREAT” – THE INTERPERSONAL CONTEXT ............................................................. 35 “I AM AN AMBASSADOR OF OUR PRODUCTS” – THE PERSONAL CONTEXT .......................................... 36 ORGANISATION B – CASE REPORT ........................................................................................ 39 ORGANISATION B’S LEARNING TEAM AND KS CULTURE........................................................................ 39 INTERPERSONAL CONTEXT OF ORG. B’S LEARNING TEAM .................................................................... 42 PERSONAL CONTEXT ...................................................................................................................... 42

5. CROSS-CASE DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ........................................................................ 46 5.1. 5.2. 5.3. 5.4. 5.5. 5.6. 5.7. 5.8. 5.9.

DISTANCE BETWEEN KS PRACTICES, TOOLS AND DAY-TO-DAY WORK ..................................... 46 ORGANISATION CULTURE.................................................................................................... 47 FOCUS ON BOTH PROCESS BASED AND PRACTICE BASED KS .................................................... 49 CODIFIED VS. PERSONALISED KS ......................................................................................... 49 TRAINING ......................................................................................................................... 50 EASY ACCESS TO INFORMATION AND EXPERTS ...................................................................... 51 UNINTERESTING (ACTIVITY OR APPLICATION) TITLES ............................................................ 52 RECIPROCITY AND INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS .................................................................... 52 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION FOR FUTURE RESEARCH................................................. 53

REFERENCES .............................................................................................................................. 55 APPENDIX A: QUESTIONNAIRE ................................................................................................... 64 APPENDIX B: INTERVIEW INFORMATION SHEET .......................................................................... 68 APPENDIX C: CONCENT FORMS .................................................................................................. 70

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1. INTRODUCTION

When shared with others uninterruptedly, [Knowledge] grows supremely. – Bhartrihari (C 450 -500)

1.1. RESEARCH MOTIVATIONS

Brought up with the ideals of learning, working, and sharing knowledge with others, the researcher started a discussion forum while he was an editor with an e-Learning organisation, and editing the courses created by a globally-distributed writers, almost an year ago. They used to send individual courses for editing, and it was not long before the researcher started to find the need for similar improvements to varied courses. Style-guides were seldom referred to and the researcher had to give the same kind of feedback he gave to one writer to the other, repeatedly. Then he thought of an idea: a naïve idea that if he started a discussion forum using SharePoint functionality, to share generic feedback so that everybody will have a dialogue over writing rules, the forum might as well turn into an incubator for new ideas. Everyone was excited and the forum was launched. The researcher was even appreciated for that attempt by his manager. But the happiness withered and realisation struck hard in less than 3 months as there were just couple of discussions, and the researcher wondered what might be the reason. He wondered why employees clogged on Facebook and not the discussion forum, where the latter had a definite chance of helping them do their job in a better way. Then after returning to studies last year, he observed the similar response to the forum on the university virtual learning environment. Only a few were using the forum, even though there appeared to be euphoric enthusiasm for social constructionism and Vygotskian education models. This paradoxical response has provoked the researcher to study knowledge sharing and collaboration behaviour, and the present research’s motivations are rooted in that dismay over the discussion forum. 1.2. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

The initial study revealed that there was less research on collaboration and knowledge sharing in the Organisational Learning domain and that it has been more a favoured topic of management literature, under the umbrella term, Knowledge Management. While the economical aspect of knowledge and its management seemed to make sense, the researcher was

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disappointed by the fact that very few looked at this dynamism from learning perspective. The Knowledge Management domain concentrated on assimilation and reproduction but there was a gap in how knowledge is constructed in personal, team, and organisational levels. On the other hand, Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) strategies in e-Learning sphere did little in ameliorating the understanding of how once knowledge is co-created, it can be managed and used for further innovations. There was a need for bridging these two. During the times when there is an upsurge in Web 2.0 technologies, when social media is helping people attain democracy, the researcher wanted to study what it takes for any knowledge sharing initiative using technology to be successful. 1.3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Since participation in knowledge sharing portals was voluntary, the researcher started to look for the personality traits and personal motifs behind the participation. However, since reading Crook (2000) and other management literature, it became apparent that the knowledge-sharing behaviour manifests due to various factors. Thus the research questions transformed from ‘why someone participates or does not participate in knowledge sharing portals’ to the following two questions: -

What factors motivate employees to collaborate and share their knowledge? What factors motivate employees not to collaborate and share their knowledge?

1.4. RESEARCH APPROACH

As mentioned above, the research is based on the presumption that knowledge sharing is more or less individual behaviour that is facilitated by various factors. Earlier research has studied this personal behaviour and found that individual attitudes, team characteristics, and their perceived control over the behaviour have immediate impact on the behaviour presentation itself. However, what antecedents trigger these attitudes, norms, and perceptions was to be investigated. Thus it necessitated an ecological approach to the study, factoring organisational, technical, inter-personal and personal characteristics. Moreover, as it is an exploration of various factors and that mostly to do with the personal perceptions and individual attitudes, the research also required a focused study of an ecology – an organisation – and thus the method of case study, and an approach of semi-structured interviews was adopted. Nevertheless, during this exploration, a review of management, psychology, and educational literature thus then resulted in a theoretical framework that ultimately the research was carried upon. The framework evolved to use Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), Self-Determination Theory (SDT), and other interpersonal and organisational strategic characteristics. Furthermore, the objective of factoring in as many contexts as possible also lead to study two teams instead of

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one. This cross-case method thus approached the study in a sequential fashion, where the study of the first organisation has helped orienting the study of the second. Finally, in way of a crosscase discussion, the researcher found interesting answers to the questions. 1.5. STRUCTURE OF THE DISSERTATION

This research will be presented in four main chapters. Chapter 2 attempts at providing an overview of knowledge sharing research, touching upon how the importance of knowledge has come into the foray, how different disciplines tried to understand its creation and management, etc. They it brings together these literatures to form a theoretical framework upon which the research was based on.

Chapter 3 will then discuss the research’s methodology, rationale for the research and its design, and will also provide an overview of the research sites and participant demographics. The chapter concludes with the threats to the research’s internal and external validity and enlists the measurements that are taken to curb these threats.

Chapter 4, Findings and Analysis, weaves around participants’ perceptive commentary about their motives to share or not to share their knowledge and their observations on organisational, interpersonal, and technological factors that in turn had an effect on their behaviours or choices. The chapter thus presents each organisation’s case report independently, but more or less in the similar vein.

Finally, in Chapter 5, the answers for the two research questions are discussed on the basis of Chapter 4. The chapter concludes with the directions for future research and a brief summary of the findings.

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2. LITERATURE REVIEW Drawing on research into content and collaboration (C&C) software1, Keitt (2011) recently concluded that despite heavy investment by organisations in C&C software, the intended goal of collaboration remains elusive beyond minimizing travel costs. This is in marked contrast to the wishes of those organisations who try to remain competitive in the ‘knowledge economy’. (Lundvall, 2002). In discerning the emergence and application of these diverse organisational strategies, this thematic literature review tries to delineate the present state of academic understanding and further draws out a framework for the present research. 2.1. FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO INCREASED INVESTMENT IN C&C SOFTWARE

At the start of 2008, Young et al. (2008) predicted increased uptake of C&C software in organisations, describing how decision makers have prioritised Web 2.0 technologies and communication software adoption for their business success. More recently, these findings are supported by Keitt (2011), whose research revealed growing adoption of collaboration software, even amid the onslaught of the economic recession.

Drucker’s influential article (1992) on the changing nature of organisations and work provides a strong departure point for the study of the reasons for uptake in the C&C software. Drucker hinted a ‘transformation’ of an organisation to a knowledge-based organisation in the ‘knowledge society’ where ‘knowledge is the primary resource for individuals and for the economy overall’ (pp. 1). While stating this change is imminent across all the business and organisational types, he suggested that every organisation needs to: -

continuously “[abandon] everything it does” “exploit its knowledge”, and “create [something] new” through innovation (pp.2)

In other words, organisations, in this continuous process of creating knowledge, must transform themselves into “learning organisations” (Senge, 1990). However, Drucker (1969; 1992), who coined the term ‘knowledge work’, states that the challenge inherent in the move to a knowledge-based society is to “make the pluralism of autonomous, knowledge-based organizations redound both to the economic performance and

Including, for example, blogs, discussion boards, forums, individual and multi-user chat, conferencing software, document and information sharing mechanisms, etc.,

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to political and social cohesion.” Of the several key notions articulated in this statement, the most important is that of pluralism, which in turn mimics society with all its attendant diversities and gatherings. Critiques of the philosophies underlying the new ‘knowledge society’ (Wilson, T.D., 2002), argue that the need for knowledge always existed and that each generation ascended on their new inventions, However, UNESCO’s (2005) treatise defends the concepts of knowledge societies stating that during earlier generations, the knowledge was “an exclusive domain of tight circles of wise men” (p. 17) and that the present advent of network-based technological innovations will allow the realisation of free-flow knowledge. These concepts of pluralistic (internally heterogeneous) organisation, and the new technological affordances have clearly ushered in increased investment in collaborative technologies across organisations. Especially after 1990s, as policy makers and organisational pundits started realising the growing importance of continuously being disruptive and inventive with the processes of relearning and unlearning (Toffler, A, 1998), in the light of the above-mentioned economical and social insights, there evolved a notion of organisational learning (Easterby and Araujo 1999). Malhotra (1996) lists three prominent definitions of organisational learning: “Organisational learning is the process of detection and correction of errors. [In organisations,] individuals’ learning activities, in turn, are facilitated or inhibited by an ecological system of factors that may be called an organisational learning system” (Argyris, 1998) Organisational learning is an integration of four constructions: “knowledge acquisition, information distribution, information interpretation, and organizational memory.” (Huber, 1991) “[...] Organizations are not built to learn. Instead, they are patterns of means-ends relations deliberately designed to make the same routine response to different stimuli, a pattern which is antithetical to learning in the traditional sense”( Weick 1991, p. 119)”

Employees thus create, distribute, interpret, and store this information and as an entity organisations “know what they know”, and adapt (by ways of correcting themselves without examining how and why something went wrong, or in other words single-loop learning) or generate (by ways of continuously experimenting and correcting the core ways organisations perform certain tasks, or double-loop learning) new knowledge. However, as Prange (1999, p. 27) mentions, the question of “who”, is it organisation or the employees who learn, is akin to the question of whether learning is individual or social. As stated above, and as Argyris and Schon (1978, p.16 in Smith, M 2001) observe, organisation is a “cognitive enterprise” in which employees are in the continual process of understanding and modifying organisational practices

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and in those ways learning about themselves in comparison to organisational setting. They in turn codify or store this information and knowledge in personal images and organisational maps, and these are accessible to each and every employee and they form the basis for newer enquiries.

To realise this sort of continual learning in organisation and in order to be a ‘learning system’ (Schon, 1973, p. 28), managers and industry experts alike, searched for a form of ‘template’, or a framework, and it in turn resulted in the concepts of learning organisation. Highly publicised with the help of Senge, P’s seminal work, the Fifth Discipline (1990) and his theories of systems thinking, organisations strived to create, capture, disseminate, and imbibe a culture of continuous learning. Following Senge’s work, numerous partisans of the concept of a learning organisation prolifically produce abundant literature. However, the lack of theoretical base and an over-simplified cure-all formula did not take off (Smith, M. 2001). Nevertheless, these trends, along with the economic perspective of organisational competitiveness resulted in Knowledge Management theories. 2.2. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-LEARNING

To address the demands of the above stated societal, economical changes and the growing needs of organisational learning, and basically to “make the [organisation] act as intelligently as possible” and to “realise the best value of its knowledge assets” (Wiig, K, 1997), Knowledge Management (KM) theories evolved. Along with these KM initiatives, there was already a growing need for organisational training that is available to the employees whenever they want and wherever they need it and this, with the technological affordances, resulted in adopting eLearning mechanisms. However, the view of knowledge as an asset and its distribution to knowledge workers has been the main orientation of the organisations since they realised the importance of organisational learning. On the other side, creating and capturing knowledge assets, in other words “harvesting” the knowledge, has also become imperative for the leaders, especially with the help of e-Learning (Rhoads, E. 2004, pp. 14). This shift from capitol centrality to knowledge centrality of organisational thinking resulted in changed ‘managerial’ activities and together these activities were termed as Knowledge Management (KM). Ouintas et al. (1997 in Balasubramanian et al. 2006) define KM as the process to “discover, develop, utilize, deliver, and absorb knowledge inside and outside the organization through an appropriate management process.” Davenport and Prusak (1998) and Allee (1997) opine that KM is a systematic and

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organisational process to acquire, organise, sustain, apply and share tacit and explicit knowledge. Holm (2001) defines KM as a process to get the right information to the right people and to facilitate knowledge creation and sharing. These definitions indicate that KM discipline concentrated more on the lines of management, sharing and distribution, rather than creation. Nonaka (1995), however, attempted at comprehending the knowledge creation process -- tacit to tacit (socialisation), tacit to explicit (externalisation), explicit to explicit (combination), and explicit to tacit (internalisation) – but these classifications are not fully grounded in learning theory. However, major aspect of these processes is knowledge sharing and transfer (if knowledge is viewed as a substance that can be shared or transferred). But the point here is that KM disciplines looked at management and neglected the creation and the learning processes imbibed in it (Kienle, A., 2006). On the other hand, the dissipation of information and a possible creation of knowledge, which then serves the ‘harvesting’ aspect of knowledge management, has been the central aim of the learning and development teams. They took the advantage of the technological advances and used e-Learning methodologies primarily to this purpose. However, growing popularity of social or situational orientation of learning, and socio-cultural learning theories, and the Web 2.0 technologies, etc. have helped in the evolution of e-Learning to e-Learning 2.0 – a catch-all term to denote the use of technology, for example discussion forums, blogging, knowledge portals, to facilitate learning in communities of practice (Downes, S, 2005). Moreover, recent advances in learning theory highlighted the need for situated, active, community-based learning experiences (Lave and Wenger, 1991; Engestrom, Y., 1999) and social, informal learning practices. These new theoretical insights and socio-cultural ideologies resulted in computer-supported collaborative (CSCL) learning strategies and a growing shift to facilitate social interactions in Learning Management Systems (LMSs). However, these ideologies are robust in knowledge creation, but face challenges in terms of management where it is difficult to ‘[combine] the collection or distribution of [...] content’ (Kienle, A., 2006 p. 162). Nevertheless, these two disciplines evolved independently and separately and at present face interdependent challenges. 2.3. HOW E-LEARNING AND KM ARE KNITTED TOGETHER

Both elearning and knowledge management feed off the same root: learning, improved capacity to perform work tasks, ability to make effective decisions, and positively impact the world around us. The difference between KM and elearning is a function of time … Knowledge management is dynamic. [E-learning] is static. (Siemens, 2004)

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Though clearly flawed, in confusing e-Learning with instructional design, Siemens’ discussion (2004) above helpfully underlines that e-Learning and KM have same ground. Any technological mediation in a learning process, coupled with the sociological, psychological, physiological dimensions surrounding this process, may be defined as e-Learning. Holmes, B and Gardner, J (2006, p. 14), define e-Learning simply as ‘online access to learning resources, anywhere and anytime’. This access to learning resources is mainly provided through LMSs. However, as explained above, LMSs are now being modified to facilitate learning communities, discussions, and co-creation of knowledge in the form of blogs, forums, and wikis. There are systems being developed to find an expert in the field, and learn from their interaction. This is synonymous with the concept of More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) and expanding one’s zone of proximal development (ZPD) (Vygotsky, 1978). Luckin, R (2010) while advocating a redesign of learning contexts suggests employing an ecology of resources model, where the focus on single user, single software, and single location moves to a community-based learning and where the learner is at the centre, amid various experts and learning resources. These advancements in terms of technology and theory are in line with the KM practices of capturing knowledge, providing knowledge resources, and building communities of learners.

Along the same lines of the argument presented above, Chatti and Jarke (2007, pp. 5), proclaim that ‘KM and LM (learning management) are two sides of the same coin’ and present several critical factors that must be addressed for the development of KM and LM strategies. One of these factors is fostering a knowledge-sharing culture. They also suggest bridging these two fields using Web 2.0 technologies like blogs, discussion forums, and wikis. 2.4. COLLABORATION AND KNOWLEDGE SHARING (KS) AS MOTIVATED

Knowledge sharing and collaboration are the key pillars of the above mentioned KM and collaborative learning practices (Alavi and Leidner, 2001; Nonaka, 1995; Chatti and Jarke, 2007). As defined by the National Network of Collaboration, “collaboration is a process of participation through which people, groups, and organizations work together to achieve desired results. Collaborations accomplish shared vision, achieve positive outcomes for the audiences they serve, and build an interdependent system to address issues and opportunities. Collaborations also involved the sharing of resources and responsibilities to jointly plan, implement and evaluate programs to achieve common goals.” This collaboration, the researcher believes is the base for knowledge sharing. While considering both the tacit and

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explicit types of knowledge at individual, group, and organisational level, the research takes Nonaka and Toyama’s (2001) definition of knowledge, that it is a ‘justified true belief’, into its stride. The research thus adopts Davenport’s (1997) definition of knowledge sharing, which is an ‘act of making knowledge available to others. It is the process through which knowledge held by individual is conceived into a form that can be understood, absorbed, and used by others.’

In the present organisational climate, KS involves a considerable, conscious deviation from the employee’s day-to-day work and requires a voluntary consent on the sharers’ part to participate in a conversation, helping to foster, or even seek out from any knowledge building activity. The knowledge creation process, as mentioned by Nonaka (1995), has four modes: socialisation, externalisation, combination, and internalisation. Collaboration is apparent in the socialisation and combination modes, where people get together, observe others, learn from their behaviours, acts, practices and where people exchange their thoughts explicitly with each other or collaborate on a topic, in that process arrive at a definitive understanding. However, for these two “tacit to tacit” (socialisation) and “explicit to explicit” (combination) modes to occur, employees should either: -

Convert tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge (for example writing a blog, or answering a question on discussion forum, or contributing to a collaborative project), in other words, externalise, or Observe or comprehend the explicit knowledge shared by the other employees and in that process internalise it.

It has been suggested many times in earlier research that converting tacit knowledge to explicit is in itself a learning process. On the other hand, internalisation synonymises with the learning process unequivocally. If these processes involve any technological intervention, it can be termed as e-learning without hesitance. However, the main focus of Nonaka’s synoptic presentation of the knowledge-creation process above is to foreground the active, conscious involvement of the employees involved in that knowledge-creation process. This active involvement entails some antecedent intentions or needs to meet certain conditions (Moslow, 1968). Gredler, Broussard, and Garrison (2004) mention that our decisions to do or not do something are influenced, and they attribute the word motivation to this influence. This activity involves time, interest, and above all willingness, and this involvement has some motives behind it (Allen, Tammy D., 2003). Despite this apparent connection between individual motivations and collaboration or KS activities, and the insight

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that ‘collaboration is motivated’, the literature researching this relationship is scant (Crook, 2000; Osterloh and Frey, 2002). Eggert (1999, pp. 8) defined motivation as ‘the process which encourages and guides behaviour’. The emphasis on ‘process’ in this definition encapsulates a course of action aimed at the achievement of some desired result, either to meet needs or achieve power or affiliation, as elucidated below. Guay et al. (2010, pp. 712) defined motivation as “the reason [...] underlying behaviour.” These reasons for acting in certain ways are influenced by attitudes: a state of mind that is influenced in turn by various beliefs, norms, feelings, and values. While elucidating his functional approach to the study of attitudes, Katz,(1960, pp. 167-204) explains that ‘both attitude formation and attitude change must be understood in terms of the needs they serve, and these motivational processes differ, so too will the conditions and techniques for attitude change.’ In a similar vein, Moslow’s (1968) Hierarchy of Needs theory identifies five categories of needs and, through this categorisation, explains that people behave in certain ways because they are motivated to meet: psychological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization needs.

Taking Maslow’s theories further, Alderfer’s (1969) ERG theory explains that people are in the continuous act of satisfying their existence, relatedness, and growth (ERG) needs, and that they pursue this through different modes of action. In a similar vein McClelland (1961) looked at human beings’ motivation to gain achievement, power, and affiliation. However, whatever classification of needs is adopted, it is evident through these explanations that motivation is the drive to achieve or meet certain needs, whether social or personal. This motivation is, as per Deci and Ryan (1985), a direct result of internal or external factors, and motivation therefore can be classified into external and internal motivation. In their Self Determination Theory (SDT) (2000) they stated that the internal motivation is the strongest driver for motivation, where as external rewards might hamper the motivation on an on-going term. Nevertheless, research into human motivation has yielded numerous theories and valuable insights. Broussard and Garrison (2004) classified the existing motivational theories into three main groups: -

Firstly, there are theories that investigate the relationship between people’s notion of their self-worth, confidence, their abilities and the ways they act, for example Bandura’s (1982) self-efficacy theory. A second group of theories try to investigate the willingness and expectations behind attitudes. These include expectancy-value theory, intrinsic motivation theory, and as stated above, self-determination theory (SDT).

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Finally, there are theories that associate motivation with cognition; for example, selfregulation theory (which explains how certain human beings can regulate their actions as per their cognition) and volition theories (which in turn postulates that human beingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s will dominates a course of action and that this will determines whether any tasks are met.)

This classification helps us identify various attributes that provide an ecological perspective on why and how human beings act in certain ways. These factors can be societal, personal, or situational. The study of work-motivation, and specifically the voluntary act of knowledge sharing and collaboration, necessitates a serious consideration of all the factors enlisted above. The theory of Reasoned Action, and its amelioration, the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1992) successfully attempt to unite the diverse factors outlined above. They see behaviour is a complex process resulting from individual attitudes (beliefs about their behaviour or simply an action), peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perceived control of the behaviour, and (the perceptions of) social norms. They state that, with these beliefs and perceptions, behaviour is always reasoned or planned. The following diagram, taken from Ajzen (1992), attempts at a graphical presentation of these theories.

Attitud e

Subjectiv e Norms

Intentio n

Behaviou r

Perceived Behavioura l Control

Figure 1: Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1992)

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In line with these expectancy-value theories, Kelly and Thibaut (1978) have developed SocialExchange Theory, emphasising that exchange is fundamental to human beings and that any social nature is aimed at maximising benefits and minimising costs. As an advancement to this theoretical stance, Constant, Kiesler, and Sproull (2000) developed an information-exchange theory which holds that information or even knowledge is also perceived as an individual asset and people exchange it the same way they exchange any other entity, by comparing what they are missing and gaining. They also state that this exchange process is influenced by the social and organisational contexts, and thus try to combine various factors that are involved in this dynamics. Nevertheless, various researchers have used the theories outlined above in their empirical investigation into the complex processes of collaboration and knowledge sharing in workplace settings. The following section presents a review of this empirical research. 2.5. REVIEW OF EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON MOTIVATION AND KS & COLLABORATION

Despite rich scholarship in motivational psychology, organisational behaviour, epistemology, and sociology, the empirical research highlighting the relationship between motivations and knowledge sharing and collaboration, as stated, is sparse (Osterloh, et al., 2002). Lam and Lambermont-Ford (2010), in their literature review of motivation and knowledge-sharing in organisational contexts, observe that the existing research looks at knowledge-sharing either from a knowledge-based or transaction-cost perspective, and that organisations will benefit from each of these. They remark that most empirical research has limited itself to one motivational mechanism where numerous directions are available for investigation. Along with these, previous literature reviews by Andriessen (2006) and Wang and Raymond, (2010) are also used as access points to some of the influential literature on knowledge sharing behaviour and the factors that motivate this.

However, the following cross-literature discussion attempts to find patterns in the previous research, delineates the advancement of the research until now, and highlights the future research opportunities. An interesting point to note is that none of the articles is from the field of education. It is clear that the knowledge sharing has been taken over by Psychology, Business Management, MIS, and other economics-based fields. Another interesting finding is that most of the articles are recent â&#x20AC;&#x201C; published either in 2010 or the present 2011. Nevertheless, the available research has furthered the understanding of this complex and dynamic relation. Gleaning from the review of this research, and employing an ecological perspective, this section

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seeks to categorise diverse motivational factors in relation to four main contexts: organisational, inter-personal, individual and technological.

2.6. CONTEXT-BASED CATEGORISATION AND DISCUSSION OF THE LITERATURE 2.6.1. ORGANISATIONAL CONTE XT

Many studies have examined the impact of organisational culture, rewards, and performance appraisal mechanisms on knowledge sharing. When we look at organisational rewards and their motivational effect on collaboration and knowledge sharing, there appears to be a conflict of findings. Hendriks (1999) found that money or rewards can certainly increase the quantity of KS and participation in collaboration but not the quality of contributions. On the other hand, Hung, Shin-Yuan’s (2011) and Hsu, Chin-Lung’s (2008) research conclude economic rewards do not impact even on quantity. However, Jiacheng, Wei (2010) argued that external rewards or punishment, including economic incentives, bring about compliance to organisational norms and in turn may have a motivational impact on participating KS and collaboration efforts. Affirming this negative impact of monetary rewards on KS, Cockrell’s (2010) research based on self-determination theory found that not only do these economic rewards lack a positive impact, but there is a danger of producing pseudo - or valueless - KS in firms. They furthered this research in diverse organisational contexts and concluded that the pseudo -KS is less predominant in higher-education in comparison to finance, insurance, and real-estate (FIRE) firms. This in turn highlights the impact of organisational culture on employee’s knowledge sharing and collaboration behaviour. Milne, P (2007), in her literature review of organisational culture and its impact on KS, affirmed that rewards and incentive programmes positively affect employee motivation, performance, and interest, she suggests that there is no single research revealing whether these positively influence knowledge sharing. She thus suggests that future research should seek to identify the effect of these incentives’ on KS. Adding to this observation, and in in contrast to the research set out above, Amin (2009) observed that extrinsic rewards have a positive impact on employee’s attitude to KS. In contrast, affirming the negative aspect of organisational rewards, Lin (2007) observed in his quantitative analysis that expected rewards failed to positively influence employee attitudes and behavioural intentions of sharing knowledge. Similarly Bock et al.’s (2002) research, which is cited widely, opposed the use of external rewards aimed at fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing.

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Barachini’s (2009) research on organisational culture highlights two major strands of leadership. Governance-based perspective, which emphasises the role of extrinsic motivation, aims at curbing opportunism and contractual hazards in the form of incentives and government structures. On the other hand, a competence-based perspective attempts to build an identitybased normative intrinsic motivation and to foster a sense of social community among its members. As well as considering motivation from both extrinsic and intrinsic perspectives, he argues that it is necessary to care for the hedonic (enjoyment-based) motivational perspective as well to understand how employees see organisations as devices to satisfy their learning and growth needs. This research thus hinted at the advantages of a competence-based perspective over the governance-based orientation. In the same vein, Osterloh and Frey, (2000) use crowding-in and crowding-out theories to highlight the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and focus on how to transmit tacit as opposed to explicit knowledge. While arguing that intrinsic motivation is much more important than extrinsic, they suggest that a firm’s incentives will not guarantee augmentation of intrinsic motivation. They further argue that to facilitate tacit knowledge sharing across teams, organisations need to withhold marketing strategies and foster personal relationships, emphasizing participation, for example, linking pins or overlapping teams, etc. The research of Qinxuan (2011) reveals present knowledge-workers’ wishes and orientations, concluding that knowledge-workers treat themselves as members of a society, the organisation, and that they are intrinsically committed to its betterment. In that process, organisational trust in employees is of crucial importance. While these enquiries identify some vital aspects of intrinsic motivation, the impact of organisational rewards, structure, leadership perspectives, diversity, and practices are yet to be researched (Wang and Raymond, 2010). 2.6.2. PERSONAL CONTEXT

Research on personal characteristics and motivation to collaborate or share knowledge highlighted two major points: reputation and feedback. Hsu’s (2008) quantitative analysis found that employees either are altruistic in nature and share their expertise for the betterment of their teams or they seek to gain recognition and feel valued through such knowledge sharing. Chang, drawing on social-capital theory, also found that altruism has a positive impact on the quality of KS and that it is more influential than the external rewards. The research also presented the role of reputation-seeking on collaboration motivation. While discussing the importance of hedonic motivational perspective, as mentioned above, Barachini (2009) employed Alderfer’s ERG theory and found that justification and refutation of perception, attainment of personal goals, and peer -learning are the main motivating factors for employees

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volunteering participation in collaboration and KS efforts. He also highlighted individual characteristics such as the desire to help each other, seeking for recognition, and the derivation of enjoyment through interaction also effect collaboration. In their theory of reasoned actionbased survey, Lin (2007) concluded that in addition to reciprocal benefits, self efficacy, and enjoyment in helping others affect attitudes of sharing knowledge. Finally, it has been identified that demographic factors such as gender, age and education level also impact on the willingness to share knowledge (Liu, , 2010). Managerial influences on knowledge sharing motivation have been well studied. However, the research showcasing the relationship between individual personality and motivation to collaborate and share knowledge is very minimal. Matzler, et al. (2008), highlight the impact of personality traits as robust predictors of organisational behaviours, attitudes, and performance, attempted to link two personality traits, agreeableness and conscientiousness, to knowledge sharing via affective commitment and documentation of knowledge. They argue that agreeableness influences an individual's affective commitment to the organization and that affective commitment and conscientiousness predicts the documentation of knowledge. In turn, this affective commitment, measured through the documentation of knowledge, influences knowledge sharing. However, as they clearly mention, their research has only taken agreeableness and conscientiousness into account, leaving aside three of the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;big fiveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; other personal characteristics: neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion.

Matzler and Mueller (2010) reemphasise the importance of analysing the relationship between personal characteristics and determinants as antecedents to KS involvement, focusing on goalorientations (for example, learning orientation, performance orientation, etc.) towards knowledge-sharing behaviour. They conclude that the learning-orientation positively affects involvement in voluntary acts of knowledge sharing. Unsurprisingly, they also conclude that performance orientation has a negative influence.

As the above discussion highlights, research on personal characteristics is centred on altruism, work experience, reputation and recognition seeking. However, there is a dearth of academic research focusing on personal attitudes, characteristics, and perceptions about evaluation. 2.6.3. INTERPERSONAL CONTEX T

Very few research papers investigate the relationship between team characteristics and employee motivation to KS and collaboration. However, the limited research did highlight that

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interpersonal context has considerable impact on the ways employees collaborate (Jiacheng 2010). Barachini (2009) argues that KS is a kind of trading process or business transaction, and thus highlighted the economic perspective of give and take. The voluntary act of collaborating or KS, as he suggests, involves time and effort with employees investing in order to receive something in return. In this transactional process, trust (Chang, 2011) and self-efficacy play a major role where knowledge-recipient has to believe what the knowledge-provider is sharing. Employing three motivational theories i.e. incentive, goal-setting-social cognitive, and social motivation theories, Quigley, Telsuk, , Locke, , and Bartol (2007) studied the relationship between knowledge provider and recipient. They concluded that knowledge-providers invest in KS in exchange to group-based incentives. In these incentives, identification or recognition is very prominent (Jiacheng, 2010). Seeking to bridge the literature gap in showing the relationship between interpersonal trust and knowledge-sharing, Renzl (2008) concludes that the ‘fear of losing one’s value’ can hinder knowledge-sharing but that this can be compensated by augmenting levels of trust in management. He thus emphasises the centrality of the individual’s role in knowledge sharing and suggests that management should ascertain each individual’s contribution, providing them with confidence that their unique value is intact irrespective of their codification of knowledge. However, in an interesting observation of online, groupware behaviour, Hendriks, Paul (1999) concluded that anonymity increases KS. Though this is in slight contrast to studies emphasising recognition-seeking investment in KS, it can be understood that a knowledge-recipient may value anonymity they seek help, thereby overcoming intimidation and removing fear of the loss of status. Thus, the dimensions of structure, relation, and consciousness affect the quality and quantity of KS (Chang, 2011). Though the research has highlighted the impact of team characteristics, processes, and personal affinities on KS and collaboration, there is still a need to identify how diversity, internal social networks, and communities of practice (CoP) affect KS and collaboration. 2.6.4. TECHNOLOGICAL CONTEXT

In his quantitative analysis, Hendriks (1999) concludes that introduction of ICTs to facilitate knowledge sharing does not increase personal motivation. He adds that different modes of learning and knowledge-sharing warrant different ICTs. He also argues that software designers should take note that anonymity increases KS, and allow users to post comments or pose questions without being identified. In contrast, the researchers who highlight reputation and recognition as positively impacting KS behaviour also suggest that it is necessary to

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accommodate feedback mechanisms in discussion forums and blogs. Reaffirming these observations, Hsu’s (2008) research highlighted that the ease of use and the enjoyment associated with use of an application has a consistent effect on KS motivation. However, literature on motivational aspects of knowledge sharing and collaboration has been centred on people and their societal, organisational, and interpersonal behaviour. Though the recent surge in knowledge sharing and collaboration is partly due to the rate of technological innovation, research has tended to neglect this impact. Academic fields such as interaction design emphasise the need to understand the relationship between technology and people’s emotions or behaviour, but little attention is given to investigating how the technological context -- the tools and applications that organisations employ to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration – affect KS. Listing some of the philosophical underpinnings of knowledge sharing behaviour online, Matthews and Stephens (2010), highlight the notion of epistemic closure. They argue that people’s ‘behaviour is often motivated by the need to obtain (or to avoid) specific or non-specific epistemic closure’ (p. 8), and that our pursuit of a fast answer should be facilitated by the technology or this will demotivate our use of that particular tool. This observation suggests that accessibility of information and experts within an organisational setting has a definite effect on KS motivation. However, empirical research on these themes, especially in the field of KS and collaboration, is still needed. 2.7. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK - IMPLICATIONS FOR PRESENT STUDY

Years of research have furthered the understanding of KM practices and KS initiatives. This also helped ameliorate our understanding in terms of the complexities involved in the organisational dynamics, but the orientation that KS and collaborations are motivated and ecologically influenced is considerably minimal in the empirical research. Moreover, the research failed to present the various antecedents to the KS attitudes and intentions. Based on the discussion above, and the factors that motivate and the barriers that prevent KS and collaboration, the following framework is developed. This framework, as Gagne (2009) envisioned, is a combination of Theory of Planned Behaviour (to understand the attitudes behind KS behaviour) and Self- Determination Theory (SDT, to enumerate the antecedents to the KS attitudes). It also fills in Gagne’s original framework with Anderson’s (2006) inputs of codification and personalisation KS strategies, and finally factors in interpersonal relationships and their impact on individual attitudes. Thus in its exploration of various factors that motivate employees to share their knowledge, one of the inherent purposes of this research is to validate this framework.

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Organisational & Technology Context

Interpersonal Context

Personal Context

Team Structure, Characteristics , and Network

Attitude

Subjectiv e Norm

Intentio n

Behaviour

Perceived Behavioura l Control

Figure 2: Theoretical Framework KM Strategy: Codification vs. Personalisation

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3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Acknowledging the intricate nature of knowledge sharing, this research employs a cross-case study methodology. Before elaborating on the research method, a first section highlights the rationale of the research and its design. In the following section, the research participants, data collection and analysis methods are discussed. The chapter then concludes with a critical appraisal of the employed case study method and analysis techniques. 3.1. RATIONALE FOR THE RESEARCH AND DESIGN

In the previous Literature review chapter a case has been made for the importance of KS and collaboration in increasing individual effectiveness and enabling the sustained competitiveness of organisations in changing economic milieu. Organisations understand this and they try to facilitate KS, but all too often in vain. This disparity between organisationsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; growing investment in collaboration technologies to facilitate knowledge-exchange and innovation and employeesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; lack of interest in their usage serves as the fundamental rationale for the research. Numerous research projects have attempted to answer this question approaching from a range of directions (See Ch. 2.). Investigations that aim at an ecological and motivational perspective of KS and collaboration are, however, very few. Several factors have been identified that influence KS behaviour, with particular weight attributed to organisational and interpersonal dynamics. As the framework towards the end of the literature review suggests, several more factors need to be investigated, specifically personal attitudes and individual perceptions of organisational settings, interpersonal relationships, as well as of KS and collaboration (Wang and Noe, 2010). Enquiring into KS and collaboration as ecologically motivated and trying to explore as many factors as possible serves as another rationale for this study.

Though a number of quantitative studies used theories of social psychology, they failed to identify the antecedents of employee KS attitudes (Wong and Noe, 2010). These antecedents can be of varied nature and may have origins in innumerable settings. Thus there is a need for a research investigating the roots of personal attitudes towards KS. Further, most of the present research into collaboration and KS has oriented itself around technology-based KS with less attention paid to identifying attitudinal differences associated with the use of face-to-face or one-to-one KS versus technology-based codified KS. Finally, KS as a phenomenon extends to various contexts both hierarchically and vertically, for example, manager and employee or employee and employee relationships; this necessitates a study capable of tracing these links beyond the limits of a single, artificially circumscribed context. To meet these needs of

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understanding multi-seeded KS and collaboration needs a panoptic, yet in-depth, investigation. Most of the earlier research in this pursuit adopted a quantitative analysis; however, I would argue further in this chapter that quantitative methodologies are poorly suited to researching KS behaviour. However, it can be stated that to research the vividness and intensity of KS and collaboration behaviour, needs a design that is ‘more open, more involved, [... and] more objective’ than any quantitative mechanism, as in the qualitative enquiry presents a ‘fundamentally more concrete and plastic image’ of the phenomenon (Flick et al., 2004, p. 5). Thus the present research aims at ameliorating the understanding of KS and collaboration from a ‘thick’ description, in order to decipher not just the behaviour but its vital context (Greetz, 1973, p. 5). 3.2. CROSS-ORGANISATIONAL CASE STUDY

And so these men of [h] indostan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong! -

John Godfrey Saxe (1872)

While quoting the above illustrated blind men and their erroneous efforts of describing an elephant, Stake (2006) coins the word “quintain”, a neologism through which he tries to encapsulate a phenomenon that is as complex and vast as the sort of elephant the blind men sought to envision, but failed as they lacked a (holistic) vision. Fathoming the heterogeneity of voluntary collaboration and knowledge sharing, the “quintain” or phenomenon, which is the focal point of this study, thus requires a holistic analysis capable of considering many of the variables that may influence the motivation of employees to(or not to) share their knowledge. As information regarding the effect of these variables is not readily amenable to numerical analysis, there is a need for a design that provides enough flexibility to the researcher to investigate personal behaviours in different settings. To meet these needs of flexibility, factoring various variables, and to study them in real-time context, a qualitative, case-study method is thought best suited for this research (Bryman, 2001; Robson, 2008; Cohen, Manion, and Morrison, 2007). Vaus (2001) advocates the case study design that it allows for a study paying attention to the specificities of ‘behaviour tak[ing]place within a context’ with its meaning stemming largely ‘from that context’ (p. 235). He (p. 232) also states that case studies are useful in studying situations associated with knowledge sharing, which, as presented above, are characterised by a “large number of variables”.

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The design of this research was therefore initially focused on a single case study – drawing on a mixed-method approach. However, this design evolved during the literature review and initial interactions with participants, where it became evident that the research on KS necessitates a study that is not just “situated”, but also “diverse” (Stake, 2006), cutting across multiple contexts and seeking to provide a kaleidoscopic view of KS’s dynamics. This line of argument might lead to the view that research on KS requires numerous cases. However, to reference Stake (2006) again, attempts to study a number of cases in order to better represent the entirety of KS, risk undermining the attentiveness to context and specificity which, as argued above, this research requires. The research design therefore evolved to include two sequential cases, with the second building on the insights of the first, with the aim to generate a crossstudy report. This in turn opened the opportunity to cross-reference and compare results as well as to identify how organisational culture and technological availability affect KS.

3.3. CASE SITES

Merkens (2004, p.166-167) enunciates that the “selection of [a research] group takes place according to the aspect of accessibility and is not independent of the prejudices of the investigator.” This might be partially true when the present research study’s selection of organisation is taken into account, but the research participants were mostly handpicked, thanks to the managerial consent and approval. This purposeful selection of participants aptly helped in addressing the questions the conceptual framework, which resulted after the literature review, posed. Appropriate criteria was maintained in the case site and participants selection as to whether they are all knowledge workers, whether they work in a fast-paced environment that requires them to be always current, and whether they are to portray skills such as decision-making, negotiation, critical thinking, and superior computer literacy. Along the way, while talking with primary chosen participants, snowball sampling was also helped in identifying those participants who are active in sharing knowledge but seldom use any technology medium to do so. There is possibly no way for an external researcher (an outsider) to identify these kinds of participants.

In the beginning the researcher faced access problems, mainly due to lack of any personal contact within some organisations. In response to these, the researcher ultimately drew on personal contacts including former colleagues and gained the consent of top managers who function as “gatekeepers” (Merkens, 2004, p. 166) within their respective organisations. Further

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information about these gatekeepers is given in the following discussion; however, caution was maintained to ensure that the participants’ selection was not unduly influenced by management interests. The researcher was given freedom to handpick the primary participants on the assurance of maintaining absolute anonymity (See 3.6 of this chapter). Obtaining managers’ approval in turn also allowed participants to ‘open up’, fully participating in discussion with the researcher, sharing personal feelings about their organisation, immediate peers, as well as their individual attitudes towards KS. Many of the interviews also benefitted from an existing relationship of trust, due to the fact that the researcher had previously worked with a majority of participants, either on a freelance assignments or full-time basis, and has an in-depth prior knowledge into the day-to-day interactions of the employees. This ensures stronger authenticity of the research.

Discovering different factors that motivate employees to contribute or not to contribute to the collaborative learning environments necessitates studying two different strands of involvement within the learning environment: participants who contribute regularly and those who do not. Moreover, one of the challenges in researching the varied space of workplace learning is that of ensuring the sample’s ‘representativeness and parameter’ (Cohen, Manion, and Morrison, 2007 p. 100). To overcome these two challenges, the initial hand-picking of the participants was based on a stratified, purposeful sampling technique of the population (Patton, 1990). The first stratum was researched to discover what factors motivate them to contribute to collaborative mechanisms and share their knowledge and the second stratum was to find out what barriers they have in collaborating. The other purpose of using this stratified purposeful sampling is to ensure that the sample is “closer to the population mean” (Robson, 2008 p. 262) and thus ensure internal validity of the research. Nonetheless, a total of 17 participants were interviewed, of which 10 participants from Organisation A and 7 participants from Organisation B, out of which 11 were male and 6 female. Both the organisations are in the IT industry, have globally distributed teams, and maintain a similar organisational structure. However, these two organisations have been chosen on the hypothesis that in order to remain in the fast-changing IT industry, and to remain innovative, they have to share their knowledge effectively. The following is a brief demographic description of each organisation and the research participants. But, it is of critical importance to note that, the case sites, though have ‘heterogeneity’ in terms of overall business lines, are homogeneous in terms of their learning market orientation, geographical distribution, and organisational structure (Gerring, 2009, p. 50).

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3.3.1. ORGANISATION A

Organisation A is the one of the biggest technological companies in the world. It designs, develops, manufactures, licences a range of software products and services. It has development centres, research labs, and service centres all over the world and it also provides certification, training, and runs a dedicated network-based academy for software developers of its products. The team from which the present researchâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s participants are is called the Learning group, which designs and develops learning solutions (online and face-to-face) for students, information workers, and software developers using the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s technology. It implies that the team has to update itself regularly in order to provide training on the cutting-edge technologies the company ships.

The team consists of project managers (PMs), content development managers (CDMs), product planners (PPs), and technology specialists (TSs). In total the research involved participation by 9 members of the Learning team. One more participant is one of the Sr. Vice Presidents of the organisation, who actually initiated blogging in the company. Out of these 10 participants, 3 are from Ireland, 1 is from Denmark, and the remaining 6 are from India. They all have equal access to the organisation-developed communication tools, telephone mechanisms, and collaboration tools, such as Microsoft SharePoint, OneNote, and Lync. 3.3.2. ORGANISATION B

Organisation B, also an US-based multi-national organisation, is a 70,000-employee strong giant that provides customer management and information management solutions. With its own line of software products, the organisation assists various clients with its agent-based, self-serviced, solutions for any communication, financial, technical, retail, healthcare, billing needs. It has 68 customer care centres across the world and trains its customer care professionals with internal facilities. As in Organisation A, the research participants are also from the Learning team. This team provides training solutions to its entire customer service professionalsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; population. It also, occasionally, provides face-to-face training solutions. The team is divided functionally, for example, instructional designers, learning consultants, new media designers, content engineers, quality assurance team, etc, and a total of 7 participants were interviewed for the research. One Sr. Manager is interviewed to provide us with managerial perspective to KS and the remaining 6 provided honest perceptions on KS in organisation. However, the team was not originally part of the existing organisation. In fact, the team was acquired from one company to the other 3 times, and has seen the ups and lows of these transitions. Out of the rest 6 participants, 2 are

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from Philippines, 1 from the US, and the remaining are from India. If not the same, the team also has access to similar technologies to community as Organisation A has.

Nevertheless, the following is the description of how the data is collected and analysed from these two Learning teams. 3.4. DATA COLLECTION

This research project’s questions are concerned with discovering personal attitudes. Achieving the aim of discovering personal intentions and attitudes therefore requires a “humanistic” (Mason, 2002 p. 63) approach. This enquiry has to be centred on interaction, allowing meanings and revelations to be co-constructed, by the active, focused participation of both researcher and participants; a dialogic method where ‘conversation with purpose’ takes place (Burgess, 1994: 102). Also, these personal attitudes are manifested by various external factors and participants’ own perceptions of their contextual elements. These contexts differ and so do the participants’ perception from one another. An additional technique involves asking participants to engage with hypothetical situations constructed by the researcher on the basis of earlier interviews, and an understanding of their specific context; this process requires a rather customised data collection technique. Understanding this social setting, context, or situatedness of the participants and their personal attitudes, is a complex process and this complexity cannot be fully addressed by other research designs aimed at generalising research findings. It is also mentioned above that KS behaviour is influenced by a number of factors, and picking them requires, firstly flexibility (Bryman, 2008) and secondly a mechanism to extract useful information. These requirements of dialogic, flexible, and contextual modes of enquiry, associated with a multi-variable study, can be effectively addressed through the technique of semi-structured interviews (Bryman, 2008). Indeed, as Mason (2002, p. 65) asserts, this qualitative approach helps the researcher to achieve ‘depth and complexity in [understanding] people’s situated or contextual accounts and experiences, rather than a more superficial analysis of surface comparability between accounts of large numbers of people.’ Such an approach is well adapted to the key aims of this research. The theoretical framework prepared in response to the thematic literature review provided a strong base for generating an initial set of questions for the semi-structured interviews. However, the distinctive focus of semi-structured interviews involves thinking in and through a given context, spontaneously asking questions on the basis of participants’ responses; this intensive methodology requires a considerable investment of time, preparation and focus. Mason (2002, p.69) remarks that researchers do assume ontological or epistemological

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positions, on the basis of which they make judgements or decisions on how to conduct the qualitative research; on the basis of these judgements or decisions they are able to “give some form of structure and purpose to the data generation process”. While concurring with this observation that any qualitative interviewing is not totally devoid of structure, I would emphasize that the ontological and epistemological structuring of research should be shaped by an intensive dialogue with literature and through the interview process itself, with initial personal ontological positioning being placed at risk (Stengers in Whatmore et al. 2003). This way, it is possible to make “sensible, intellectually compelling and systematic interpretations and judgements” (Mason, p.69). While the framework and questionnaire helped in focusing on the objective of the interview, catering conversations around KS and collaboration, the researcher sought to identify potential pitfalls in the interview process, by conducting two hourlong pilot studies with the researcher’s peers, each of whom possessed several years’ of crosscultural workplace experience; the questionnaire (a guide) was re-worked in the light of these pilot studies. Similarly, as the interviews proceeded, the questionnaire was constantly checked and revised, with a fuller revision occurring following the completion of interviews with participants from the first organisation. Before interviewing participants from Organisation B, the researcher was able to factor in any missing elements, and eventually, revisited the participants from Organisation A, requesting responses to one or two additional questions via e-mail . The interviews were conducted online via Skype, MSN, or Gtalk with voice rather than video call adopted to avoid any discomfort to participants. Similarly, when the participants were unable to access these online communication tools, the researcher used Skype to call either the participants’ mobile or landline. This enabled the use of open source audio recording software for automatic recording, with an additional external recorder used as a back-up, in case of any malfunction. These audio recordings were transcribed using Express Scribe. In addition to these recordings and transcripts, the researcher continuously made rigorous notes providing an immediate overview of the interview conducted.

3.5. DATA ANALYSIS APPROACH

As interviews proceeded, the researcher gathered the scribbled notes, audio recordings, and emails into respective computer folders in order to easily identify each item and avoid bewilderment associated with the flux of data! As the data gathered, the researcher approached it on multiple levels: (i) performing a ‘literal’ reading of each interview transcript - focusing on

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the form, style, and structure of the conversation and (ii) reviewing the transcript on the levels of interpretation and reflexivity, apart from looking at them from the conceptual framework point of view (Mason, 2002). During these several stages, the researcher generated writing ‘trials’ - initial textual summaries and discussions of the interviews in order to test and begin forming interpretations. These trials are important to the process of research and analysis since, in the words of Latour (2005 p. 53), “without accounts, without trials, without differences, without transformation in some state of affairs, there is no meaningful argument to be made about a given agency, no detectable frame of reference.” Once the personal profiles (of each interviewee) have been identified, this approach helped in finding and understanding the patterns in the “data and therefore theorize about dynamics, relationships, and links in the data.” The conceptual framework earlier developed also helped in comparing and contrasting the personal idiosyncrasies, cultural differences, etc. by providing a structural, argumentative base in order for the researcher to develop and assert theoretical reflections (Maresick, et al., 2005, p. 335). Building on its roots in the literature review process (See Chapter 2.), the conceptual framework evolved through dialogue with diverse theoretical resources; as data was analysed, these theoretical tools enabled the concentration and honing of developing ideas and insights. Still, this dialogue between theory and empirical study was, however, not limited to one direction; the researcher also sought room for the empirical materials to shape fresh insights - opening new theoretical departures.) 3.6. ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

“... the ethical demands [of research] provide one of the best contexts for learning to become a more ethical person.” Research is not just a matter of following or sticking to some ethical guidelines, but, as Lambek (1997, p. 33) explains, it is a matter of personal “disposition”. Right from the conception of the research questions, which drove the research, moral issues formed the object of repeated and active reflection, checking that the research contributes a positive value, and causes no harm, taking into account all the participants involved: to wider organisations and individual employees, to clients and vendors, and to the research community and practitioners (Alderson and Morrow, 2004). As the primary measure, during participant selection, as Gregory (2003) suggests, they were given complete information (even to sharing some of the literature review and bases of the questionnaire) in order to gain a full and open consent.

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Stutchbury and Fox (2009) and Alderson and Morrow (2004) pose ethical considerations in terms of research’s rationale and the data collected to meet that rationale. As mentioned in Section 3.1 earlier, KS and collaboration are the object of significant existing analysis, however investigation of the motivational factors and the employment of an ecological perspective were clearly lacking in the available literature. While existing research had investigated how personal attitudes influence KS, but the antecedents to these attitudes were yet to be studied. This research sought to respond to these gaps; gaining value and purpose and with it an ethical impetus. However, a limitation (discussed further in the next section, 3.7), in terms of data might haunt the research. 17 interviews, as the researcher is fully aware of, is not a great number to summarise the entire story of KS, but factoring the magnanimity, resources, and time of the present research, if not commendable, the data is considerable. Punch (2009, p. 100) says that any research is “as good as [its data]”. The data collection, analysis, and presentation techniques, thus, directly determine the demeanour of the research. To meet this moral code, as explained above, the theoretical framework developed from the literature review was extensively used during the preparation of questions, progress of interviews, and analysis. On the top of this framework, the cross-case design and presentation of individual case reports initially and cross-discussion later on also helped in identifying definitive patterns of KS dynamics. Once the analysis was done, as Yin (1994) suggests, the drafts of each case study were shared with the respective participants, not only to keep the word of informing them before submitting the report to the University, but also to eradicate any researcher’s subjectivity and any myopic observation. This level of iteration, which is imperative for any empirics, may not have been possible if the researcher overwhelmed himself with more than the 17 participants and on the other hand it will also not deluge the participants with a flux of information – as a survey might risk to. This researcher obtained approval from the University of Oxford’s Central University Research Ethics Committee and adhered to the guidelines enumerated by several research organisations (AERA, 2000; BERA, 2004; ESRC REF, 2010). The researcher was not physically present at the same place as the respondent and the online interviews were conducted without any video; this enabled comfort to the participant needed. On the other hand, this allowed the researcher a freedom to make notes and reflect without the distraction of having to convey the participants any visual attentiveness, affirmation and encouragement vice versa. All interviewees were clearly informed that they can stop participating in the research any time. The researcher sent solicitation e-mails and before commencing any interview, he briefed about participants that

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they were free to not to answer any question or even to fully discard the arrangement. The interviews were recorded for accuracy and secured on the researcher’s personal drive, protected by password. While presenting the data, anonymity was maintained throughout and any personal contact information (Skype, e-mail, or any other communication tool identification) is neither presented nor stored anywhere. Though the managers of each case are aware who participated, steps were conscientiously taken to avoid their being able to identify individual responses by limiting any subjectivity the participant holds and condensing the responses while quoting. 3.7. RESEARCH LIMITATIONS, VALIDITY AND GENERALISABILITY

While utmost care is taken and all the personal resources are fully exploited to research KS and collaboration behaviour, the present research is limited to only personal conversations and not any unwarranted generalisations. The purpose was to trace out the antecedents of myriad attitudes towards KS and collaboration. These assertions can be strengthened by longitudinal and observational studies, if resources and accesses are available. As Egon Gubai and Yvonna Lincoln state, “in situations where motives, attitudes, beliefs, and values direct much, if not most of human activity, the most sophisticated instrumentation we possess is still the careful observer – the human being who can watch, see, listen, question, probe, and finally analyse and organize his direct experience” (1981, In Stake, R 2006, p. 213). While this sort of critical inquiry was pursued, factoring in as many dimensions as possible, for example, interviewing management, technical experts, clients and vendors, executives and non-executives, etc. apart from the main participants, an observational research is definitely the better choice for researching KS behaviour. On the other hand, the entire research is hinged on personal interviews, as Yin (1994) observes, and this might pose a threat to construct validity of the research because of any potential investigator subjectivity. He presented three remedies to curb this danger: by factoring multiple sources of evidence, providing a chain of evidence, and/or getting the case report reviewed by some of the participants. Not only to increase the construct validity, but as an ethical practice, the researcher had the report reviewed and corrected on the basis of participant feedback before submitting for the evaluation. On the other hand, internal validity was assured by matching patterns with literature and the framework as described earlier. External validity is to ensure the findings are generalisable beyond the immediate case. Single case study is often an object of this criticism. However, this criticism is more to do with the statistical but not the analytical generalization. Nevertheless, the present research’s

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generalisability is slightly on a higher side as various factors were considered, such as, maintaining a participant selection criteria, purposeful selection method, case sites that are multi-cultural, participants who are geographically distributed, and the business lines that are highly populated. In addition to these criteria, the present research involves a crossorganisational study that caters to clients and vendors, executive and non-executive, development and support contrasts.

As Stenbacka (2001, in Golafshani, 2003, p. 552), states, “if a qualitative research is discussed with reliability as a criterion, the consequence is rather that the study is no good”. This observation is to suggest that the aim of qualitative research is to attain the intended quality, in terms of bettering the understanding of a phenomenon, but not trying to devise a mechanism that can be tested and retested. The argument here is to state that reliability (or even validity) are aimed at ensuring the quality of quantitative studies, whereas, to ensure the quality of the qualitative research, the notions of credibility, neutrality, dependability, and transferability are to be taken as the main criteria (Lincoln and Guba, 1985, p. 300).

Finally, as Yin (1994) remarks, cross-case study might be beyond a single researcher’s capacity, as it involves numerous resources, time, and effort. This ambition of studying two cases together, and the lack of resources, might truly result in a handicapped research. However, keeping heed of this danger, the research attempted only, though most important, semistructured interview data gathering technique. In addition to researcher’s effort, the managers from each organisation, and the researcher’s supervisor immensely helped in getting the accesses to resources and people as and when needed. This research is thus a result of not a singular effort by the researcher himself but a cumulative partnership.

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4. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS “In fact, I wish to argue that the [contexts] in which collaborations get organized – the tide in which we swim – should be a natural starting point of analysis… [It] includes any analysis that takes ‘agency’ seriously.” (Crook, 2000. p. 161)

An assemblage (Delanda, 2006), a society (Drucker, 1969), an organism or even a psychic prison (Morgan, 1997) – however metaphorically an organisation is termed – it is a conglomeration of ‘institutions that continually construct and re-construct their [...] habituses’ (Smith, 2003). It is this tide, as Crook (2000) mentions, in which flows knowledge, springing from and lapping the shores of these individual habituses. The process of identifying the factors that facilitate this collaborative knowledge creation and flow needs to emerge from the analysis of this tide. While analysing the organisational contexts, this chapter first presents a series of vignettes describing the ecology of each of the two organisations, extracted from dialogues with the research participants Rendered in interviewees’ own words, this structure of this section draws on the conceptual framework developed in the initial literature review (see Fig .2.). For anonymity, participants from Organisation A will be referred to as R1, R2, R3, etc., and respondents from Organisation B will be referred to as P1, P2, P3, and so on. 4.1. ORGANISATION A – CASE REPORT 4.1.1. ALL IN A DAY’S WORK – THE LEARNING TEAM AND ITS TECHNOLOGY

“We have a totally outsourced business model”, reports participant R3 of the Organisation A’s Learning team. As noted earlier (see Ch. 3), the Learning team consists of project managers (PMs), content development managers (CDMs), product planners (PPs), technology specialists (TSs) and International Curriculum Managers (ICMs). This group provides training solutions, relating to the organisation’s IT products, to diverse audiences. For example, as R3 elaborates: If [an operating system (OS)] is [being launched] and there are four types of audience [...], we create courses to map to each of these audiences. [...] Let’s assume there is a course on [how to configure and troubleshoot that OS]; for that title, there will be a PP, who actually defines the product, and technology, content, and testing managers. We discuss [the learning solution] at our team, but writing and design [are done] by outside contractors or vendors. This sort of team structure, as R5 explains, is “more of a matrix organisation.”

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In this way employees of diverse skills are pooled together to work on a project. Working in this model necessitates the team to communicate and collaborate at three levels: (i) at the level of project team (a team consisting of a CDM, a PP, a PM, and a TM, etc.), (ii) within functional groups - learning from the best practices (a CoP of CDMs or of PMs), and finally at customer (who takes training) levels. While e-mail is the predominant communication channel, and is considered, as R1 says, the only ’official‘ medium, there are several other mechanisms for the team members to collaborate with each other, real-time; this corresponds with an agile software development process requiring iterative evolution – a process which resists attempts at long-term planning. To meet the collaboration need at a project-team level, they predominantly use a software called Lync. This software offers unified communication, combining instant messaging, audio and video conferencing, mobility, software-based VoIP, and group chat. As R5 further elaborates: Lync is like Skype. We can use Office 2010 [applications] also in Lync. It’s very easy to [have] spontaneous meetings with people. You can double-click and call. Pretty dynamic. We can have face-to-face meetings with that tool …More and more it’s moving to realtime meetings using Lync. We have agile methodology, where we have shorter, more frequent meetings. At a coffee station or people’s desk and just have 20 mins catch up on the project. It’s very informal. These meetings, though informal, are directed at solving a project-related problem or accomplishing a specific task, for example, as R4 states, ‘...to check the status of a course, to review course design, etc.’ In addition to such meetings, as R6 points out, the team 'do[es] brown-bags’ for information sharing across the teams. He explains: Of course we don’t have literal brown-bags, but the main thing is we schedule half-anhour sessions [...]. And it happens quite often, probably once a week, sharing new processes, [and] new things, with other teams. Yep!” … [They happen] online, [and over] Lync or Live Meeting. We record that meeting and we post that to an [internal Wiki]. So, people know where to find it. That’s normal procedure. Along with the video conferencing, regular communication also involves text- based ‘Chat’. Though some of the team members associate chat communication with informality, others view it differently. As R4 states: “[...] all our chats are saved. It’s official as it can get.” The highly personalised discursive style of project life-cycle work, described above, shifts to a more codified mode of communication as it comes to project milestones. For example, to track a project, as R3 explains,

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There is an internal tool which is called, the Title Manager. All the titles (courses), assigned resources for that title, who are [the] CDMs, TMs, PMs, and PPs [are listed there]. For that title, along with vendors, all the information is tracked there. So, you can go in and search there and you can enter financial year and it will show the recent title and who worked on that. We entry into that tool before any project starts, and while [crossing] any milestones. When a project ends, as R3 explains, the team [has] something called post-mortem, which happens with all the stakeholders, internal and external vendors who participated in development. We have some docs and reports to fill out what went well, what didn’t go well, and what can be bettered, etc. They are stored internally on a SharePoint location. As R5 further adds: We do transition phase, documentation phase, using SharePoint, OneNote, and a repository of historic documents, outlining technical details, escalation texts, and project works. There is a pretty structured way of communication and sharing knowledge. Every time.

Once the project is over and a course is released onto the market, customer feedback becomes very important. As R3 explains: We closely track [customer feedback] and, for example when we start working on [a new product], we check what customers said about [earlier versions of the product] and we do a thorough analysis of customer feedback … There is a third-party tool for that, Metrics that Matter®, and all the customer feedback comes from that tool. The Sustained Engineering team looks into [that] feedback, and through internal SharePoint they report this feedback to the specific team. Even the post-mortem feedback also happens through SharePoint. This information is in turn used when making further business decisions, as R7 explains, When we start building a new course on [a new operating system], we check what customers said about [the earlier operating system], and how much of that has to be implemented in [the present operating system], and do a research on earlier version of project. We will try to incorporate all of it. Taking customer feedback and re-working the existing processes, as R7’s comment highlights, hints at the ‘double-loop learning’ (Argyris & Schon 1978).

While the knowledge sharing strategy appears to take the form of a codified, project-based one

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using SharePoint and Lync, the atmosphere changes when it comes to engaging with customer. Fully embracing valuable customer feedback on the courses developed, the Learning team seeks to engage the customer at every stage of course development. As such, there are two blogs and a news group for the team to communicate with the customers on a range of topics. One of the blogs is intended as a means to share technological input about new products while the second is focused on the learning products themselves. The news group, which is “a discussion forum” (R1), acts as a main communication channel through which customers can directly “interact with the internal folks, and they can share their ideas, thoughts, etc. - not just to share their knowledge but to solve problems collaboratively” (R1). Apart from the feedback, additional benefits are also gained as the team get to know developers and know what the new trends are, and eventually what new courses that are to be developed, etc. And also what customers like or do not like in our courses(R5). R5 further illustrates the positive effect of this collaboration with the customer directly when he says: When you post a query or requirement on newsgroups, it’s amazing to see the viral effect. They either come to write a course, review the subject matter, or even direct you to somebody who can do that task. It’s fast. And when the course is developed and when you share the information that the course is developed in collaboration with one of the community members, the course’s credibility is even more. Simply because that person has lot of credibility in their community. This direct collaboration with customers, focused on gaining end-user input on product development, appears to receive significant emphasis across the team, though is not directly attached to performance appraisals. Participation in these news groups and blogs are not “part of KRAs [key responsibility areas]”, says R6. The team is not evaluated on customer participation, but on “the customer satisfaction” (R5), facilitated by the dialogues described above. R10, who is a vice-president of the organisation, substantiates this saying: Collaboration and communication is not a ‘nice to have’ or a ‘voluntary’ activity in our organisation. We provide training on it, we assess their involvement, and we take it seriously. We back it by providing incentives and recognition and we bring that awareness to everyone. This project-based collaboration is also supported by several mechanisms for identifying experts or information for any field. For example, vendor recruitment is based on existing knowledge of the vendor’s capabilities. R3 illustrates this when she says:

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I can go deduct all courses [by a vendor] from the central SharePoint location, see what scores they got for their content development basing on different areas, and then take a decision to continue or not. This vendor information is not just a metric-based competency profile of a vendor, but the ‘justified true belief’, in other words, knowledge of the previous employees who worked with those vendors. The scores they assign to a vendor is based on personal judgement (Nonaka & Toyama, 2001).

In finding an expert, apart from the aforementioned Title Manager, Organisation A also uses SharePoint-based profile system. As R2 explains, “If anybody searches [SharePoint] for Instructional Design or content development, [my name] might pop up.” Along with that, as he further points out, “we have [group-specific] aliases, or e-mail groups, where everybody can get access to who is working on [that specific] area.” As R4 summarises, “We have distribution aliases or mailing groups [about] virtually any topic under the sun.”

However, the robust knowledge-sharing mechanism at both project and customer levels seems to struggle at the level of a CoP; at this level peer-to-peer knowledge sharing is limited, happening mostly face-to-face, and is therefore restricted to a given location. As R4 elaborates, “There is something like that (CoP) but I don’t get to be a part of it, coz I am all alone here. And since [a] lot of these things happen at [the head office], there are [a] lot of meetings, and other things that I don’t get [to be] a part of. That’s a trade off.” R1 and R6 contradict this, however, saying, “We have internal SharePoint locations where we post documents and share our ideas with the peer group.”(R1) and “[if] you know something that you think other people might benefit [from,] even before they ask, you do have a dashboard, where you can put all knowledge or you can say, it’s a Wiki page on SharePoint, depending on how you want to call it...and they frequently update that” (R6).

Apart from these technological affordances to collaborate and share knowledge at different levels, the organisation also understands the different way employees prefer to communicate. R2 provides further insight into this when he says, I am a visual communicator. [...] There was a project where I had to explain something and it was a long-winding thing. So, I’ve recorded my audio, synched it up with a couple of slides, and sent it out. And, next day, I got a mail that [the recipient] understood and that it [saved time].

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Moreover Organisation A appreciates the participation in collaborative forums, blogs, and knowledge sharing in way of recognition and feedback mechanisms. They have rating systems to the blog posts, and R1 was awarded for his “sustained knowledge sharing and collaboration efforts”, eventually becoming considered as “an in-house expert on things related to customer collaboration.” This attitude towards knowledge-sharing prevalent in this organisation is exemplified in the vice president’s remark that: “Internally in [Org A], we treat [collaboration and communication] important while recruiting as well. We then support it not only by providing all the mechanisms and technologies, but providing training to people on how to use it. And finally, we recognise and value it and appreciate it.” 4.1.2. “MAKE SOMEBODY GREAT” – THE INTERPERSONAL CONTEXT

One of the respondents, R4 says: “[As I am away from the main team], it is easy for me to get lost and know nothing [about] what’s happening in the content world. So, [this] is why we identified one person. A person who is involved in lots of things happening at [the head office]. She feeds me regularly on what’s happening, what the latest trends are, and how I can contribute, and so many things. ” As Gagne (2009) explains, this sort of ‘mentorship’ provides autonomous motivation and a sort of comradery.

On the other hand, interpersonal trust in terms of acknowledgement, respect for ideas despite their triviality, is also, as R7 explains, positively impacting the free-flow of ideas. The [Video Games] team, earlier I used to work with, they had some sessions where everybody stands up and shares one idea. It doesn’t matter if it is too small or not. They were a very close group; they had you know some sort of trust that however small the idea is people will value it. Most of our famous games were born out of those sessions. This signifies two points: internal trust and management’s willingness and sincerity to put these ideas into action. This action again works as a motivating factor for further participation and sharing. R7 further states that, Make somebody great. That’s what we believe in. If someone shares their personal insight, we treat it as something great and we support it. We do it in [Organisation A]. Genuinely.”

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4.1.3. “I AM AN AMBASSADOR OF OUR PRODUCTS” – THE PERSONAL CONTEXT

The following is a description of the personal context of Organisation A, which is more or less directly influenced by the organisational and interpersonal contexts delineated above. Not surprisingly, in an organisation where customer satisfaction and communication are two of the main parameters for performance evaluation, and where collaboration and sharing their ideas are applauded openly and rewarded at peer and organisational levels, each of the research participants expressed positive attitudes towards knowledge sharing, saying they seek to take all necessary steps to ensure expertise is shared. As R6 expresses, “I think in my company at least we think the success of together is valued. We encourage sharing and we do it a lot. Whether we document it? That’s [an] other thing.” The team is aware of the benefits associated with sharing expertise, insights, and knowledge. R2 summarises the benefits he gains from sharing when he says, I feel [sharing information on forums] serves my team and my organisation coz if it’s related to my goal, business, or something, I am helping with that goal. And, I am also developing a network for my organisation. It’s probably more for self-recognition and self-satisfaction. I want to tell myself that I am confident and capable enough to help somebody. Along the same lines, R5 mentions, And for me, you know I am measured on customer satisfaction rather on the courseware, so there is a lot of benefit for me to listen to the customer and see where the product is falling down. And I have an open dialogue. Then once you revise the product, [customers] see you have taken their feedback on board, and you get a lot of credibility on the community. It’s a kinda builds on itself. It’s a win-win. This attitude to KS, which is not directly measured in performance appraisals, is a result of the business process and the culture of making the team responsible and autonomous, rather than for any reputation or immediate monetary benefits. R6 summarises the antecedents to their KS attitude in these words: “It’s not in my KRA. I don’t have accountability. Because (participation in discussion forums) is something you cannot really measure [...]. But, it’s part of the job.” On further probing as to why he participates in it, despite its exclusion from evaluation, he clarifies, “We are the specialists for our products. May be you are right; may be somehow we are tied to our commitments, but we are not sales personnel, per se.” When asked if personal reputation is a motivating factor, he shuns the researcher saying: We are rather ambassadors [of] our products. I can relate to what you say if I am not working for [Organisation A] but for my organisation’s partner. There I can say, for example when I was working for Navision, I had a drive to answer people’s questions and build my reputation. [...] But now it’s different, now, [...] we are ambassadors of our

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products. ... People want to work for this kind of company. Now it’s been three years, and I believe I am sufficiently rewarded. (Emphasis added) Monetary benefits also seem to have minimal bearing as seen from R3’s remarks: “It used to be initially, but [not after] being in this career for 11 or 12 years.” Similarly, the concept of monetary incentives for KS participation is also derided by R4, who remarks that, If it’s the kind of the money that would be the difference between me owning a Mercedes [Benz] or not, even [then] I will not do it. In addition to the strong emphasis on autonomy and a sense of ownership engendered within the organisation’s culture, and the direct emphasis on collaboration and expertise-sharing within both performance appraisal and product development processes, perceptions of social norms also seem to influence this behaviour positively. R5 exemplifies this, saying, I was seen as a point of communication to our products. They wanted me to go online, go into news groups, and share what I thought of the product and what my insights about that product. Along with that expectation, working with an experienced peer-group also has some impact, which in turn signifies social norms, for example, as R2 states, I got IDs on my team with 10 or 12 years of experience. If I don’t display or if I don’t engage in functional conversations, if they feel I don’t have any personal contribution, they may soon think I have no expertise. I have to make sure that I am genuinely interested and I can contribute, and I can be a good sounding board for them. Though the KS and collaboration is valued and widely practiced in the Learning team, the mechanisms of participation selected vary considerably between individuals. Four participants choose blogs to share their ideas while others choose either face-to-face dialogue or even opt for more formally documented methods such as whitepapers, specification documents, etc. Before the conversation with R6, while doing a background check, the researcher found that during 2004 R6 had created a blog; however, he made only one post before abandoning that project. When asked why he stopped writing the blog, he replied I found the forums are much more helpful than just putting [your knowledge] on the Internet… For conceptual knowledge sharing, I can refer it to someone. So, I don’t just put it on the Web, but rather somewhere I know [the] targeted people will see. This highlights the notion that whenever knowledge is shared, a dialogue with a targeted audience is sought. In addition, the codification of tacit knowledge generates a barrier for adapting these channels (blogs, forums, whitepapers, etc.) to knowledge sharing. R2 says that, “It’s easy to talk rather than type something. And, you don’t know whether the other person understood or not, half the time [...] emotions are not there.” He further elaborates,

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You are thinking differently when you are writing, and thinking differently when you are talking. If I’m writing an e-mail, I might take one hour to write, but it might be a 5minute message. If I am saying or even recording it, I’m genuine to that conversation. I want to really intuitive about [communicating]. [...When I am talking] I am more natural, I am being more genuine to that conversation, without overloading the overall message. Further, actively participating in blogs is not considered ‘official’, and therefore is not factored into project based communication. This functions to separate such activities from the day-today work. This is illustrated in the words of R3: For me, writing out specification documents, for the products that are disseminated globally, is a bigger achievement definitely than writing a blog, coz if you ask me, [...] the entire organisation can use [them], and then create products which are used by millions of people across the globe, and that gives me more satisfaction. That’s why I don’t write blogs. [...] She adds, I think just because my work I am so involved in and I [don’t] think of getting out and do something out of the way. R4 further remarks, What happens in bulletin boards or SharePoint is that you are actually having to go out of your current work environment and check what is happening over there. It’s like Facebook, right? I mean it doesn’t come up on my Outlook. I need to physically go out and be interested to check that. But with the distribution list, the mail is actually coming to your Inbox. [...] We regularly back up these conversations to SharePoint, so that you can search for it and bring it back up. These above mentioned notions indicate at two main factors for not opting for codified ways of knowledge sharing: the distance between the day-to-day work and the technologies like blogs, forums, news groups, etc. and aversion to writing in favour of face-to-face communication.

Apart from these two, information overflow and clutter also seems another reason for not adopting codified media. R7 explains this when she says, ‘You sometimes get lots of replies if you post a question, and it is daunting.’ |Asking if that is a reason for avoiding regular access she said:, ‘That’s not the first place I would go for information, but I do post queries.’ This view is echoed by R8, who comments that, People go and post the blog just for posting. They don’t regard for the reader. There need to be strong SEO (search engine optimisation) techniques for people to find easy information. Sometimes it’s hard to find information.

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Organisation A appears to have an awareness of these personal choices and, as the vicepresident says, People have their own way of communicating and they should find which way suits them best and which way of communication has what effects. You cannot get everybody through any medium. It depends on priority and your audience. From the internal KS perspective, the organisation has to provide technologies that suit each style. Thus, Organisation A’s KS adopts both codified and personalised KS approach; the majority of project-based knowledge is documented and housed at a central location on SharePoint and customer communication happens through news groups, blogs, and third-party metrics tools. However, the personal communication (tacit knowledge sharing) is primarily centred around face-to-face dialogue, whether online or in person, and focuses on striking conversations with key persons rather than a documented resource. Participants who do not adopt blogs or discussion boards for KS state that these mechanisms are outside their day-to-day work and do not form part of their role. The organization has, however, incentivized voluntary usage of blogs, while at the same time ensuring that, when it comes to sharing individual knowledge, the incentives are intrinsic to job function, centred on increasing autonomy and ownership rather than any financial reward.

4.2. ORGANISATION B – CASE REPORT 4.2.1. ORGANISATION B’S LEA RNING TEAM AND KS CULTURE

As mentioned in Ch. 3, and in a similar way to Organisation A, the Learning team of Organisation B is also a ‘multi-functional team’ (P7), consisting of instructional designers (IDs), learning consultants (LCs), new media designers (NMDs), content engineers (CE), and quality assurance (QA) team. This team provides training solutions to the Organisation B’s entire population of customer service representatives (CSRs), including e-Learning, face-to-face and “blended” training solutions. As in the case of Organisation A, once a project is identified, a team is formed drawing on existing functional teams; for example, a designer, an engineer, a developer and a tester. However, unlike Organisation A, this team does not directly interact with end-users; as P3 summarises, “We rarely talk to CSRs about the courses. Consultants and our managers tell us what to do and we execute the project basing on that requirement. They provide us the content also.” Thus the present team structure requires communication at both project and functional team levels; which in turn is similar to a Community of Practice (CoP).

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As P5, an instructional designer, states: The [project] team meets once every Monday and we catch up to mostly check the project status and the [functional] ID team [which is dedicated to one project] meets every Thursday. And we catch up to share best practices, to review existing ID processes, etc. He adds, “The entire Learning team also meets bi-weekly to, you know, someone will present a new update or talk about a process, and like that.” The majority of these meetings take place over Live Meeting devoid of any video functionality. Though not recorded, minutes are taken. They “post minutes of the meeting to a SharePoint location” (P5). By contrast, during the day– to-day execution of project work, communication is centred around Chat, VoIP, and e-mail facilities. The courses are developed using SharePoint as the main versioning and workflow application. Along with these main modes of communication, a team blog was created a year ago. In the words of P2, one of the managers who initiated the blog, it turned into a regular knowledge sharing forum. It provided voice to those ideas which are not factored in team meetings. Because, team meetings are focused on one aspect and blog posts are out of blue. Apart from these mechanisms, which are predominantly oriented towards checking statuses and ensuring project progress, as P6 states, Not many mechanisms at present [exist] for sharing knowledge across the team that is working on different projects (CoP). There is that blog, e-mail, but I don’t see that is happening much. To quote the Senior Manager (P7) of the team: “In our organisation collaboration is given some amount of importance, but it is broken. And it is different within different groups.” This ‘broken’ collaboration and knowledge sharing may be attributed to an organisational culture that fails to incentivise such practices. Such a view is seen in the comments of P6, who remarks: I feel at [Org B], right now, we have more tools than we use at this point. If the culture doesn’t support the use of the tools, then there is no use of the technology. We just started [ID] team blog and SharePoint has all sorts of features that we didn’t take advantage of it. There’s no drive to maximise their use. P6 also reflects on possible reasons for the lack of uptake of these tools saying: ’There is a real fear to say something they don’t know in the organisation.’ One of the primary factors for this fear in the organisation might be the recent recession and the resulting three layoffs and the transition the team made from three different organisations (See

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Ch. 3). When asked for the reasons for not participating in the blog, P1 refers to this sense of insecurity or fear saying From company point of view, I should document everything. But from my career point of view and security point of view, I don’t think there is any need for me to, you know, document everything that is in my brain. To be very honest, after some time I may not be required for the company. I want to teach anybody, but I don’t want to document everything that is in my brain. He further adds, I have seen three times people laid off. Whenever layoff starts, they want me to document something. When somebody starts documenting, that means manager start[s] thinking they can get away from me. That’s why it’s better not to document everything. If that is a process, let’s document it. But if that is a skill, I will not document everything. However, on the contrary to this, P2, one of the immediate managers of P1, says, “In the last two or three organisations I worked, there is always a sense of job security. I think it’s sheer laziness that people say they don’t have security. But it is always there.” This disparity between the awareness and lack of proper communication is also evident when the rewarding mechanism of blogging is taken. P2, the manager who started the blogging, in response to what he would do to increase the participation, says that, “I will start rewarding people. I will praise that person and I will gift that person, for example, a small book..” However, one of his immediate subordinates, P3 prefers e-mail mechanism to share any new idea, saying, “I will get an appreciation if I sent out an e-mail. If I send it through blog, it becomes too generic. My manager might not see it or appreciate that much. That is not focused or targeted to some people. It’s generic.”

On the other hand, within the team, there is no mechanism for them to find an expert, apart from checking with immediate peers or managers. As P4 states, ’I don’t think there is a skillmetrics system is available where each person is classified as per their skills or capabilities.’ This is further substantiated by P3’s statement as he says, ‘There is no mechanism [for us] to find an expert basing on their skills. I can find them using their name, but I would not know what their expertise is.’ There also appears to be a lack of cross-project knowledge sharing strategy, as P1 states, Earlier, we used to have project-based knowledge sharing, where monthly they used to come and share their process and how they run the project etc. But now it is not happening once we joined [this Organisation].

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The lack of proper collaboration and knowledge sharing mechanism seems to be a result of the leadership strategy, as P7 states, ‘If a person is giving results, and not collaborating, still he or she will be rewarded. Expectation is on gaining results, but not collaboration.’ On the other hand, two other managers who report to P7 seem to think differently, where P2 says that, “If that person (those who post in the blog) is not recognised, or there is no monetary benefit, they will lose their interest,” and P6 thinks that, ‘You have to encourage them and also provide them tools. I think the more you celebrate the people who are doing it now, [the more encouragement for] the others also do it.’ 4.2.2. INTERPERSONAL CONTEX T OF ORG. B’S LEARNING TEAM

The Learning team is a closely-knit group, with varied cultures and geographies. As P4 says, We are a fun bunch. There is fun and frolic whenever we catch up, whether it is online or at a local pub. This is further exemplified by P1’s insight as he says, Most of us are in the company for years now. We are very close. We go out together, we do team outings, and we celebrate also. It’s a nice group. However, this closely knit team is divided when it comes to sharing knowledge and collaboration. As P3 says, Team might be dependent on a person and his or her skill. And when they train, they train you or share their knowledge only 50%. Once you start working, you have to go back to that person again and again. I faced this actually. Matter of survival may be. That is there. P1 further adds that: I have trust within my team, but I don’t trust my management. We are a very close group but I will not document anything as my manager will say ‘take him off.’ But there are some people in my team who are very friendly and share their full knowledge. But some will not as they make it very difficult to understand. They try to demoralise us. It hints at the existence of knowledge-hoarding, and which in turn, hints at an environment in which individual competition is imminent. This has, as P1’s comment suggests, negative impact on KS. 4.2.3. PERSONAL CONTEXT

Apart from the above delineated organisational and interpersonal characteristics, this section presents personal characteristics that might determine the KS behaviour.

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One of the major barriers to sharing knowledge is lack of reciprocity. As P3 states, ‘I didn’t get any response to any posts and that is why I lost interest. I don’t see any comments and that is why I think I don’t put anything new there.’ This notion is further apparent in P4’s observation as she says, “A simple rating tool or how many people said that they like it, or how many people said it worked for them, may be if we had in that blog, it might be helpful, coz, [and] at this point I don’t know how many people visited the blog. If that mechanism is there, it might encourage us more to participate.” However, P4’s statement contradicts the notion that rating system encourages participation, when he says: “Though there is rating or visiting system, I might not go visit it. There is no rule to do it for me, right. So, I will not.” On the other hand, lack of specificity, or focus, is another perceptive barrier to using discussion forums or blogs for sharing knowledge, against using e-mail for that purpose. To quote P3 again, I like exploring stuff. I just Google it and try to solve it on my own. One more thing, it helps in growth also. If I go directly and find something, and if I share it with my team, and with your manager, it’s a plus point for you. So, I will try to do it myself. If not, I will contact my team members. If I put it [on the blog], I am sure nobody is going to use it. It’s not generic information and that is why I didn’t put it in the blog. He also states that, E-mail is in front of you. You check it every morning. But a blog or discussion board, you won’t look at it every day. You won’t feel like opening it every day. If you get something through e-mail you will read for sure. This denotes a notion that blogs or discussion boards are outside the day-to-day job. Ironically, though the blog on SharePoint allows for that functionality of sending newer posts directly to email accounts, lack of awareness of technology also seems a hindrance.

On the other hand, P6 feels discussion boards are better than blogs for their reciprocal or dialogic affordances. She says, ‘I like forums. Because, it’s that back and forth. It stops you from going on those long rants, paragraphs and paragraphs of blogging, but I think discussion forums are valuable.’ She further unearths the roots of this interest in discussion forum when she says,“My first usage of discussion boards was part of my course, they had marks, and I had to participate in them. It’s that adoption phase and I think it helped.”

The informality also helps in positively motivating the participation, as P6 states, ‘Blog was a big thing for me when I came in. It had an informal tone, safe, and certainly, it was a big thing so that I can communicate in a safe place. I think it was because my course participation.’ She further adds, “It provided me a voice to write things out which I would not have shared in team

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meetings. If you are writing it, you are not eating away people’s time. It’s optional for them to read.” As summarised during Organisation A’s personal context, the attitude towards codification also appears to be a barrier to collaborate and that organisation should provide all the different media for people to get connected with their preferred training mode. As P1 summarises, If somebody comes and asks I am ready to help. I will give 100% to them. But when I document something, it’s going away [from] my hand. We are in a development organisation. We are not in a training organisation where we publish a book and that somebody reads that book. That knowledge is mine. He concludes saying, Video capturing, I don’t have any problem. If I create a document, everyone will put a thought and it will become strong. But video, nobody can edit it or add their knowledge.

P4 and P5 both mention that: “The reason for [them] to share knowledge is [their] awareness of things; if you are a person who is indifferent to things you will not participate in any discussion. If you are open minded, you will take an extra step to know what others are thinking and also you will share what you are thinking. And also to improve on a process or how we do things are other factors.” P4 also state that, ‘Rewards are not a motivating factor for me’. She adds, If I know that people would get something out of my knowledge or my blog post, which in itself motivates me to post something. I use it a lot, but if it is not used by the bigger team, it defeats that purpose of sharing their knowledge. So, I post, but if there no discussion that happens, it doesn’t give me motivation to post something else. P4 notes, “For me blogging or participating in discussion board works as leaving my mark. And I will establish myself as an expert. I can come up a blog and see who posted it and I might want to get in touch with that person.

On the other hand, P2 presents a different perspective, a more personal one, to his initiation to start a blog: My core skills and interests are with graphic design, photography, and in the field of fine arts. It’s a natural tendency is to show off. I cannot leave anybody without showing my stuff to him. So, for me, I have the skill and I also know that they don’t have this skill and I want to show off my skills. That is probably drives my interest. Apart from the above mentioned personal factors, one of the managers highlights the differences in the education employees received before coming into organisation and its impact

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on the workplace learning. P2: “Most of our employees have come from an education system in which no body is interested for an extra hour class. Why would that change when they suddenly come to workplace? Education system also should need to be fundamentally changed.” He further adds, The moment you say something is learning or knowledge sharing or even collaboration, people are not interested. It has to be with some team activities. This notion suggests that activities need not be obvious to employees who disliked them earlier. Emphasising this one of the other participant, P5 opines: “May be they should take the word ‘blog’ from the blog. People don’t tend to go there the moment it is some knowledge sharing mechanism.” In contrast, Organisation A’s blogs do not carry the word in their titles. They are directed towards customer problem-solving and are fully entwined in the day-to-day work and business goals. The knowledge sharing sessions are called ‘brown-bags’ orienting the focus to food rather to knowledge and its sharing.

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5. CROSS-CASE DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION You cannot motivate anyone. You cannot make a seed grow, but you can provide the right conditions for it to develop into its full potential. -

Eggert (1999)

With the view that collaboration and knowledge-sharing activities as predominantly motivated, this research has set out to find answers to the following two questions: -

What factors motivate employees to collaborate and share their knowledge? What factors motivate employees not to collaborate and share their knowledge?

A theoretical framework, which resulted after combining theory of planned behaviour and selfdetermination theories, and several other factors as suggested by Gagne (2009), Andriessen (2006), and Wang and Noe (2010), is used as a vehicle in this exploration of the organisational ‘conditions’ that are conducive for the seed of knowledge sharing behaviour (Eggert, 1999). Eventually, the first inherent task of the research was to prove this framework’s applicability and success basing on the semi-structured interview findings and analysis presented in Chapter 4. In the joint pursuit of ensuring the framework’s validity and identifying the antecedents of employee knowledge sharing behaviour, this final chapter discusses both the positive and negative factors of certain components of organisation ecology such as job structure, organisation culture, technological affordances, interpersonal relations, etc. It then concludes highlighting the limitations of the research and provides future directions. 5.1. DISTANCE BETWEEN KS PRACTICES, TOOLS AND DAY-TO-DAY WORK

By classifying knowledge into ‘explicit’ (knowledge of past events) and ‘tacit’ (skills, know-how, etc.) types, Nonaka, Toyama, and Byosiere (2001, p. 494-502) explain that the knowledge creation process in an organisation has three main components: knowledge conversion, knowledge space (Ba), and knowledge assets. These knowledge assets, and the real-time experiences, in turn provide the basis for better or newer processes. As briefly explained in Chapter 2, the knowledge conversion takes place through socialisation, externalisation, combination, and internalisation. Using any virtual (e-mail, chat, video, blogs) or physical spaces (conference rooms, coffee corners), employees create knowledge assets. Though organisations provide these spaces, in other words collaboration and KS technologies, these technologies mostly fail to produce any knowledge assets. The experiences are either not captured or they hide in individual mail boxes. As the research shows, merely advocating the codification of these experiences might provoke employees to suspect an organisation’s purposes. Moreover, making

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this mandatory also might result in pseudo-knowledge sharing (Cockrell, 2010). Then how to walk this tight rope of creating knowledge assets, facilitating knowledge creation and maintaining the richness of communication and collaboration experiences?

The answer appears to be multi-layered. One of the key findings of the research was that the employees did not want to spend more time than they are accountable for or they do not have time altogether and that they do not want to use collaboration technologies that are ‘out of’ their day-to-day work. Primarily, one of the major factors that facilitate KS is a business model that integrates collaboration activities with day-to-day work, either they are informal or formal, for example, Organisation A’s policy of integrating news groups, blogs, etc. for collaborating with customer and peer-group level communication. Secondly, again as Organisation A practices, mechanisms to record or capture individual or face-to-face experiences and providing them explicitly also motivates employees to utilise them during any point of need. This can be substantiated by taking the stride of Heidegger’s tool analysis (1962, in Harman, 2009), where a tool or technology should be ‘ready to hand’ in that it should not hinder the process with its presence but immerse itself in the pursuit of the user. For example, as Harman (2009) illustrates, technology should be like speckles eyeglasses that never show their presence when looking through them. This insight reaffirms the points that any tool should not be in the way and should be devoid of any difficulty to pursue the task at hand. Thirdly, though knowledge sharing practices need not be mandatory, entwining them to the ultimate business goals also makes the employees adopt the collaboration mechanisms. Finally, as noted, a barrier for the employees to go ‘out of the way’ of their work process and play an active part in any group activities, is that the communication does not happen directly through their mail boxes. The SharePoint-like technologies do allow for communicating with the collaboration spaces through individual mail boxes, and organisations can avail these affordances to mitigate any barriers. As will be explained further, this methodology should be rooted in organisational culture and should be supported by trust in each employee. 5.2. ORGANISATION CULTURE

As hinted above, the research found that implementing technology is not the only solution for fostering KS behaviour. An organisation’s culture, vision, and climate should inherit and echo the value of sharing individual ideas and should positively and openly reinforce the employee initiatives. Schein (1985, p. 9 in Ipe, 2003), while terming the culture as a ‘pattern of basic assumptions’, explains that a culture develops as employees engage with various problems and develop solutions for those. It means when employees find a solution basing on an assumption,

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they pass it onto newer generations as an accepted approach, and thus contribute to building organisational values and norms. So, these assumptions, or the culture, determine whether sharing of knowledge is important or profitable. Thus, a culture that incentivises and recognises knowledge co-creation and implements the ideas that result from this sharing positively affects knowledge sharing.

It was evident in Organisation A’s culture that the participants perceived their sharing is important and that they believed whatever they share will be valued and recognised. Though most of employees do not seek any financial rewards, an organisation in which employees believe they are well kept and taken care of helps build trust and thus has better chances of knowledge fluidity. As it was highlighted during the case report of Organisation B, the recent layoffs and the resulting job insecurity eventually developed individual competition and knowledge hoarding. Though financial difficulties and eventual job cuts are unavoidable, a clear communication and assurance to employee future will help in minimising the negative impact. Davenport (1997) and Gupta & Govindarajan (2000) observe this as individuals’ perceiving knowledge as a sort of power, which is a result of the above mentioned value attribution to people who possess knowledge rather than who share it. On the other hand, one of the managerial factors that facilitate KS behaviour is to set expectations, or social norms, that their knowledge sharing and collaboration are part and participles of performance appraisals. Moreover, a mechanism to celebrate and incentivise the sharing experiences also, especially during the initial phases, also fosters a climate of free collaboration where each employee will be aware that rather than the owner of some knowledge but its sharer is appraised. Not only hailing the new ideas, putting them in practices also in turn acts as motivating factor for employees to be open and creative. As seen in Organisation A’s case report, making employees autonomous helps them create newer knowledge. As Grant (1996a) summarises, this autonomy helps not just in creation, but allows organisation to access and utilise the knowledge.

The other factor that has impact on KS in the organisational context is the organisation structure. It is found that a ‘matrix’ organisational structure positively affects the KS in the teams, with its capacity to get diverse functional groups together. This ad hoc natured, ‘task force’ (Nonaka, Toyama, and Byosiere, 2001. p. 512), as both Organisation A and B showcase, are supported by bureaucratic functional teams, where the knowledge created in project-based teams will be captured and transferred to other projects. An organisation needs to be aware of this and should support knowledge sharing at both layers (See the following section for further explanation of this orientation).

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5.3. FOCUS ON BOTH PROCESS BASED AND PRACTICE BASED KS

As explained above, while the matrix organisation structure allows for a creation of newer process-related knowledge, lack of focus on sharing best practices, lessons learnt with the practice- based teams hampers innovation, within or beyond organisations (Brown and Daguid, 2001). An organisation should concentrate on capturing and disseminating these best practices within the functional teams. These teams (for example individual teams of designers or engineers) should function as Communities of Practice (CoP) where employees from working different projects would be encouraged to bring in their respective project-based insight and share it with the rest of the team working on various other projects. This in turn facilitates innovation. Organisation A and B both facilitate the knowledge creation at project-team level, but the barrier exist when it comes to knowledge sharing at CoP level. They attempt to capture project-based knowledge through end-of project reviews and reports, but as Hobday (2000) suggests, they seldom result in any success. Scarbrough & Swan (2006) term it as an ‘objectified view’ of creating knowledge assets and suggest viewing these two layers of organisation as interdependent and thus advocating equal concentration to enable organisational learning. They suggest a process-based view of projects, where each functional team discusses the individual projects that is involved in and brings together the learning to create newer practices. Though technical and physical allowances exist to augment this perspective, the motivation will be only provided by an organisation’s focus on bridging this gap. While end-of project reviews and documentation does help in transition to newer projects, the locus should be the project itself and the communication and collaboration that happens through these projects should be captured (for example, how Organisation A’s employees record their projectbased brown-bag conversations) and should be analysed during process-based, functional team discussions.

5.4. CODIFIED VS. PERSONALISED KS

People have their own individual requirements, needs, and ways of meeting these. They address their communication needs on the basis of their educational background, interest, affiliation, and comfortability. Some might prefer face-to-face communication and some use blogs to share their personal experiences. Some require reciprocity in discussion boards and some stick to email aiming at targeted audience. Thus one of the major barriers to an organisation’s facilitation of KS is adopting only one method of knowledge sharing, between codification and personalisation methods. More than ten participants of the total 17 have mentioned they prefer face-to-face communication and that they are not proficient in writing. Moreover, codification

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process involves time and most of the employees do not have it or they lack skill in externalising their innate experiences. Thought this might be a learning experience for the sharer, the immediate negative impact impedes a free communication. Luckin (2010) quotes an architectural notion called â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;lines of desireâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; or desire paths while explaining the varied individual preferences and comforts to learn something. She suggests, as people are free to take their most comfortable, unconventional way to their destination across a park or a road, they should be allowed to access anybody or any resource as per their requirement. This notion suggests that organisations should provide all the mechanisms and technologies for employees to pick and choose for them to communicate or collaborate, and that the management should treat each equally.

Hansen, Nohria and Tierney (1999) suggest the organisations to choose only one of the two codification and personalization methods. Ipe (2003) contradicts this notion with her proposition that an organisation should provide channels of communication both at purposive (formal, codified) and relational (informal, personalised) levels and that it in turn facilitates knowledge sharing. Supporting Ipeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s proposition, this research found that employees share their knowledge more when they are provided both the types of technologies. Even more, employees have expressed a negative notion to codification strategies terming them as back-up procedures and that organisation adapts codification only when they want to sack employees. Thus one of the motivating factors is to allow the employees to use any of the methods they prefer to communicate and make sure to fuse all these together, without terming any of it as either formal or informal, for attaining project and process-based goals.

5.5. TRAINING

While both the organisations researched more or less have all the technologies they need for their employees to communicate in their preferred modes, there seems a lack of technical knowledge of the affordances these technologies provide. Some of the participants complained that SharePoint blogs or discussions do not come to their in boxes whereas the tool actually allows e-mail notifications to be set up. Also, they need to be trained on what medium has what audience and how each medium meets their communication expectations. Thus facilitation and adaptation of these mechanisms can be fostered by an in-depth training of how technologies can be used and in what context. Moreover, apart from these technical training, one of the other barriers to collaboration seems written communication. Again, as noted above, this can be mitigated by not just sticking to codified knowledge sharing strategies. Nevertheless,

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communication skills, though might appear obvious, are one of the other major factors that facilitates collaboration among employees, especially when the workforce is globally distributed and requires them to work together on a single project. It is observed in this research that employees who are confident in their communication, along with other reasons, are active in sharing their ideas and insights. This in turn supports the perceived control over the knowledge sharing behaviour, where they are comfortable in putting their ideas strongly and succinctly in an open forum. Gagne (2009), on whose original methodology, the present research’s framework is based, referred to training in a different sense where she highlighted the role of mentors in knowledge sharing motivation. While acknowledging the role of mentors, here the point of focus is the training on technologies and media that employees have at disposal. This focus will help mitigate any barriers and foster knowledge sharing freely.

5.6. EASY ACCESS TO INFORMATION AND EXPERTS

Some of the research participants expressed their lack of interest in the knowledge-sharing forums mainly due to the flux of information and the consequent inability to easily identify the required information they need. There is a need to bridge the gap between organisational ontologies and the ways employees try to find information to meet their myriad needs. As explained during Ch. 2, Matthews and Stephens (2010, p. 8) mention that people are often motivated ‘by the need to obtain (or to avoid) specific or non-specific epistemic closure.’ They elaborate that though the nature of knowledge people are seeking after is not pre-determined, the urgency with which people search for some information determines their knowledge seeking behaviour. They mention that people either look for some individuals who can or cannot answer the query (experts), consulting with ‘pre-existing assumptions or stereotypes’, or the tendency to accept any information as correct basing on how fast or late it comes in. These activities in turn have effect on individual motivations.

Moreover, the research has shown that employees favoured face-to-face communication, and some of the participants mentioned to choose to speak to an expert whenever they have a query. Thus, one of the major barriers to an easy dissipation of knowledge is not having access to those experts or knowledge artefacts. Though the experts and resources reside in the close vicinity, the mechanisms to find and locate them have to be in place, not just in terms of their names, but by role, field, level, skill, project, and so on. To quote Nonaka, Toyama, and Byosiere (p. 503) again, knowledge assets, in any form for example, project-based documents, internal communications, etc., are the ‘basis of the knowledge-creation process.’ Moreover, as Steward

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(2011, p. 1) explains, “even the cleverest information architecture and the most insightful taxonomies will not mesh seamlessly and comprehensively with the mental models of each and every user.” There is not only a need to map these resources, but an organisation should make efforts to ‘tag’ them to varied purposes it can serve. While it can be daunting for someone dedicated to do that task, one of the solutions is to allowing employees to tag any written piece or e-mail and thus build a repository of folksonomies. Easy information access and access to key people provides the employees the impetus to indulge in solving their day-to-day business needs.

5.7. UNINTERESTING (ACTIVITY O R APPLICATION) TITLES

Though it might sound trivial, the very way certain activities are presented and positioned have immediate impact on the participation. Some of the participants expressed that they observe lack of interest in employees when they are asked to attend a training programme or a knowledge-sharing session. On the other hand, in Organisation A, as discussed towards the end of the previous chapter, these brainstorming and knowledge-sharing activities are termed differently and they have active participation. When employees come with different educational backgrounds and scenarios, where education has been a tedious task of sitting through hours of class-room training, employees tend to be deferential to organisational learning practices. On the top of this, they are boggled by numerous deadlines and time constraints. They are also perplexed by the objectives of the management and are uncertain about the possible impacts sharing their knowledge with the immediate team that is actually bustling with individual competitions. While trying to address the communication and perception challenges, management has to disguise the collaboration activities for the employees to connect and collaborate without any inhibitions.

5.8. RECIPROCITY AND INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS

Most of the respondents expressed that they perceive lack of reciprocity and attention when they use knowledge sharing portals, and they opt out of them for e-mail communications. Ipe (2003, p. 11), while quoting Schultz (2001) and Nahapiet & Ghosal (1998), explains that ‘individuals must be able to anticipate that sharing knowledge will prove worthwhile, even if they are uncertain about exactly what the outcome will be.’ Though she summarises the relationship between reciprocity and knowledge sharing motivations, fails to present what factors contribute to an increased reciprocal flow, where the sharer receives feedback and impetus for further sharing. This research’s findings indicate that reciprocity can be facilitated

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at multiple levels. On the basic layer, whenever employees share their insights using a knowledge-sharing portal, there can be a mechanism for them to see how many have viewed their posts and how many have found it useful. The participants indicated at having a rating or commenting system in place for them to feedback for their post. However, most important factor, or the second level of bringing reciprocity, is managerial support. As mentioned above, the leadership should make it explicit that they have acknowledged the contribution and that they will make every attempt to materialise any ideas that are shared. On the other hand, though reciprocity can better facilitated by increased employee participation; for example, as Kankanhalli et al. (2005) found, perceived reciprocity can be positively related to participants' likelihood to contribute knowledge to the community under weak rather than strong prosharing norms. This suggests that strong pro-sharing norms may compensate for the low level of reciprocity in the community. This strong pro-sharing is facilitated by internal relationships and trust. Organisational practices that foster individual competition rather than innovation and customer orientation often result in hampered interpersonal relationships, and eventual lack of strong pro-sharing. While mitigating the other barriers to the sharing of knowledge, organisations should encourage earlier adopters so that they can provide a stronger reciprocity.

5.9. CONCLUSION AND RECOM MENDATION FOR FUTURE RESEARCH

Knowledge sharing is vital for organisations to stay competitive in the ever-changing economic and technological milieu as they wish to succeed in inventing newer pathways. This vitality presupposes a need for organisations to facilitate this dynamic process consciously and openly. On the other hand, organisations should excogitate this process not from a management rather from an organisational learning point-of-view. This allows them to factor various behavioural, cognitive, and cultural elements that play a role in learning and eventual knowledge creation processes. However, knowledge sharing is a labyrinth â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a complex system of interconnecting entities and the interplay among various intra- and inter-personal conjunctures and conglomerations. Studying this thus necessitated an ecological perspective, considering personal, interpersonal, organizational, and technical contexts. Moreover, understanding the varied nature of knowledge, the research also attempted looking at both the tacit and explicit types of knowledge and opportunities for knowledge sharing, and finally organisational culture that facilitates knowledge creation and dissipation. Furthermore, the research included nonexecutive, middle-management, and executive layers of an organisation and attempted at bringing in a kaleidoscopic view of the dynamic knowledge-sharing processes, where dynamics are understood by contrasting various perspectives. It also took into consideration the two

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types of knowledge-sharing channels, both purposive and relational, and suggested not to stick to one but to provide opportunities in both ways. This ambitious research thus concludes that any knowledge-sharing initiative must be inseminated in a fertile ground of organisational culture, where a conducive environment of its growth is warranted. It should be fostered by leadership by augmenting an interpersonal trust, by rewarding and recognising the initial springs, and by providing myriad technological tools for employees to choose from to meet their needs. Individuals also need to be made aware of the advantages and they should be shown how not knowledge but its sharing is power. The research also highlighted the need to fuse these technologies and practices with the day-to-day work practices of employees. While making employees accountable to collaboration, organisations need to weed out any inhibitions in terms of job security, lack of reciprocity or acknowledgement. The research even hinted at not sticking to a single method of knowledge sharing, but to take both codification and personalisation ways in its stride. Thus the research validates and adds value to the theoretical framework developed during the literature review (See Fig. 2.)

However, as explained in Section 3.7, this cross-organisational research though has an iota of ethnographic element, since the researcher worked with most of the research participants, a full-fledged observational, ethnographic research of individual knowledge sharing practices will definitely reveal a more robust view of factors that facilitate knowledge sharing process. Along with same lines, a research that can also highlight the barriers when sharing different types of knowledge, both tacit and explicit, also will be highly beneficial. Since there are three levels of knowledge in an organisation â&#x20AC;&#x201C; individual, group, and organisational levels â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and as the present research concentrated only on individual level knowledge sharing, future research can highlight how knowledge processes between each levels and it will bring up factors that hamper the knowledge flow across an organisation.

Nevertheless, the researcher feels the present research has succeeded at least in ameliorating his own understanding of how to make a knowledge-sharing initiative a success, and will carry on propagating the wisdom of Bhartrihari (c 450-510) that knowledge grows when shared.

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APPENDIX A: QUESTIONNAIRE

Research Title

Motivations and Management: A Cross-Organisational, Exploratory Study of Collaboration and Knowledge-Sharing in Workplace

Principle Researcher

xxxxxxxx

Supervisor

Dr. Chris Davies

Purpose

As organisations invest heavily on upgrading their technology solutions to accommodate, facilitate, and foster collaborative learning, this study intends to identify factors that motivate or demotivate employees share their expertise and learn from dialogic methods. It tries to look at collaboration and knowledge sharing as motivated and that motivations are ecologically based.

Value

Research will help identify personal motivations that are of paramount importance to fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing within workplace. The research uses theoretical models like: theory of planned behaviour, theory of reasoned action, activity theory, and social network analysis, etc. for thematic and quantitative analysis.

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Semi-Structured Interview Sample Questions

Organisational Context

Interpersonal and Team Context

Individual Context

How easy it is to access an expert in a particular field within your organisation? What methods do you use to reach that expert for a solution? What are the principle means of ‘informal’ communication and collaboration in your team or org? Face-to-face or online? How much of importance is given to knowledge sharing (KS) when assessing your performance? Are there any internal rewards or incentives for sharing knowledge? Does your org expect you to share your knowledge?

To check:

How diverse is the makeup of your team? Do you have any internal communities of practice (CoP) in your organisation? What communication platform would you employ to keep engaged with professionals in your practice, for e.g., Instructional Designers, Graphic Engineers, etc.? How often does your CoP meet up? When you post a blog or you answer a discussion, do you get any feedback or any perceptive comments and what is your reaction to them? Do any of your colleagues expect you to share your knowledge with them? How they see you in this respect?

To check:

Do you like adventures (or) do you appreciate art (or) on a weekend, do you retire to your garden and read your favorite book or do you go out and meet people? How much of expertise you have in your field? (Self-efficacy) Do you think you should share your knowledge with immediate teams? If yes, why? What’s your attitude towards sharing knowledge? Do you follow any other blogs or discussions by your colleagues and how do you rate yourself amongst them? When you have a problem at your work, how do you go about solving it given two types of solutions – one face-to-face and the other

To check:

subjective norms and actual norms organisational culture and its impact on collaboration and knowledge sharing

Subjective norms Group behaviour and beliefs Culture

Motivations Barriers Intentions Attitudes Beliefs Actuality and rhetoric

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collaborative platform, which one will you prefer to take? (Ownership of problem, ease of use, attitude to knowledge sharing and collaboration.) When you have a query related to your profession, would you post the query to your colleagues or go about finding the answer through discussion forums outside workplace (like Linked In, etc.) If outside work, why? (Personal attitudes) Within your functional group, how do you perceive your position â&#x20AC;&#x201C; whether people regularly come to you if they have a problem or a query? Do you often feel the necessity to share your knowledge or learning? Do you consider sharing knowledge within your teams help you build your reputation as an expert in the field or do you think collaborating and sharing your knowledge will lead to losing your expertise? How distant is knowledge-sharing, you think, from your day-to-day work practices? For example, do you need to make extra efforts to share your knowledge or is it embedded in your workflow? What constitutes most of your knowledge sharing â&#x20AC;&#x201C; reports, lessons learnt, manuals, know-where, know-whom, know-how, experience, or education? Which of the media you use most to KS and collaboration: e-mail, chat, discussion forum, blog, face-to-face conversation, or anything else? What are your future intentions to share knowledge? What monitory rewards you expect from sharing your knowledge?

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Technological Context

Do you have any commonly agreed upon metadata or tagging system for posting blogs or discussions on a topic within your organisation? How easy it is to find information that you need from your knowledgesharing and collaboration platform? How much of ‘findability’ do your blogs or discussion posts have? How easy it is to find information you need in your internal knowledge management portal? Can you rate any posts you consulted and add tags to other user’s posts?

To check: -

Findability of information or knowledge and its impact on knowledge sharing and collaboration Epistemic closure Taxonomies and Folksonomies in Organisation

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APPENDIX B: INTER VIEW INFORMATION SHE ET

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford OX2 6PY general.enquiries@education.ox.ac.uk www.education.ox.ac.uk Supervisor Dr. Chris Davies chris.davies@education.ox.ac.uk

Motivations and Management: a cross-organizational, exploratory study of collaboration and knowledgesharing in workplace

Information for Participants

Invitation You are being invited to take part in a research study. Before you decide to participate, it is important to understand why the research is being conducted and what your participation entails. Please take time to read the following information carefully. Please ask if there are any aspects of the project that are unclear or if you would like more information. Take time to decide whether or not you would like to take part in this research.

Purpose of the Study

This study is an exploration of the factors that motivate or demotivate employees to share their knowledge and learn collaboratively in their organisations. It is aimed at identifying these factors from an ecological perspective: considering the organisational, technological, inter-personal, and individual contexts.

Participation For this study, you have been identified because of your enthusiastic participation in workplace collaboration and knowledge-sharing. Also, you are taking part in this study most probably because of your interest in understanding knowledge-sharing across your organisation and with a hope to improve the way it works.

To participate in the study, you will need to attend online interviews. You will be asked about your personal motives of, and barriers you faced for, collaborating and sharing your knowledge within your organisation. The interview will be fairly open and you can talk about any personal or professional motivations and barriers you have. The interviews may be conducted via Skype or MSN, according to your personal preference. The

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interview session will last for approximately 30 minutes and scheduled after negotiation but mostly at your convenience. In order to develop better understanding, you should give answers as detailed and faithful as possible. As part of the protocols of Central University Research Ethics Committee, you will be asked to sign on the Informed Consent sheet attached to this letter and return it to the researcher. This form guarantees the confidentiality of all your personal information.

Decision, Risks and Benefits It is your decision to take part in this study. You can decide to stop participating at any time. You do not need to answer questions that you do not wish to. Every effort will be made to preserve confidentiality. Therefore, there are no known risks to taking part. The benefits are helping to identify the issues around improving internal collaboration and knowledge-sharing. Your participation, as part of this study, will benefit those trying to understand and better the inter-personal learning experiences within an organisation and reap the most of the investments in technology to facilitate knowledge-sharing.

Results of This Research The results of this research will form the basis of an Oxford masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dissertation. Some of research findings may be used by the corporation to improve their service. However, under all circumstances, all of your personal information will remain strictly confidential. Interview recordings, e-mails and other data will be stored in the researcherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard-driver installed with password and are only available to the researcher himself. If you wish to obtain a copy of the research findings, please inform the researcher.

Contact Should you have any further questions about this research, please feel free to contact: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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APPENDIX C: CONCENT FORMS

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford OX2 6PY general.enquiries@education.ox.ac.uk www.education.ox.ac.uk Supervisor Dr. Chris Davies chris.davies@education.ox.ac.uk

Motivations and Management: a cross-organizational, exploratory study of collaboration and knowledgesharing in workplace

Consent Form

This study is an exploration of the factors that motivate or demotivate employees to share their knowledge and learn collaboratively in their organisations. This is a study undertaken by xxxxxxxx, a Masters student at the Department of Education, University of Oxford.

1. I have read and understood the information about this study and have had the opportunity to ask questions.

2. I understand that I can withdraw from the study without consequence at anytime simply by informing the researcher of my decision.

3. I understand who will have access to identifying information provided and what will happen to the data at the end of the project.

4. I am aware of who to contact should I have questions following my participation in this study.

5. I understand that this project has been reviewed by and received ethical clearance through the University of Oxford Central University Research Ethics Committee.

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I agree to participate in this study.

Name: Date:

Researcher:

xxxxxxxxx

Date:

Contact Should you have any further questions about this research, please feel free to contact: xxxxxxxxxxxx

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