A Motivational Model of Knowledge Sharing

Often, the participants who collaborate in making a decision share knowledge in a relatively informal and unregulated manner that does not require same-time, same-place participation. This chapter considers systems used to facilitate knowledge sharing in support of unstructured decisions in such settings. These systems often involve the use of collaborative technologies such as groupware, threaded web forums, and wikis. While they are not a traditional type of DSS, these systems are becoming increasingly prominent as the need to make decisions in a knowledge-rich, creativity-dependent environment increases. Such systems are analogous to, and often embodied in, virtual communities of practice, which are increasingly recognized within organizations as an important way to create and synthesize organizational knowledge. Within this relatively low-regulation environment, conventional managerial controls and incentives become less significant in building motivation to participate. Accordingly, the intrinsic motivation of participants to share knowledge becomes more important. In this chapter, we explore motivational theories that may help explain the quantity and quality of knowledge sharing through such low regulation, asynchronous, multiparticipant decision support systems. We integrate these theories into a research model, using self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan 2000) as an overarching paradigm, which can be used to explain the influence of various motivational factors on the quantity and quality of knowledge shared.