Exploration of factors that impact voluntary contribution to electronic knowledge repositories in organizational settings

The ascendance of knowledge to the rank of a key competitive resource has changed the way in which organizations attempt to manage what they know. To maintain their knowledge, organizations have implemented numerous strategies, one of which is the operation of knowledge repositories. Employees are expected to contribute their job-related knowledge to these repositories. Undoubtedly, this expectation creates dilemmas for both the employing organization and their employees. The organizations need the employees to contribute to the repositories in order to retain the knowledge within the organizations, but cannot force their employees to do so. The employees have to be convinced that it was worthwhile to contribute to these repositories. The study formulates and tests a theoretical model to explicate the Intention to Contribute and actual Knowledge Contribution of employees to organizational electronic knowledge repositories. Six previously uninvestigated relationships are proffered, and implications for practice are derived from the findings.