Knowledge Sharing, Social Capital, and Organizational Behavior

Why people share what they know at work, and how relationships, organizational support, and job design shape that choice.
Research
Organizational Behavior
Published

January 1, 2017

Keywords

knowledge sharing, social capital, social network analysis, organizational citizenship behavior, turnover intention

The question

Why do people share what they know at work, and what in their relationships, their jobs, and their organizations makes sharing more or less likely? Behind this sits a broader interest in workplace culture, leadership, team dynamics, and employee performance.

What we have done

  • Relationships. Using a social-network approach with management students’ cases, we studied how socially constructed relationships relate to knowledge sharing and how sharing builds social capital and learning relationships.
  • Organizational support. A moderated mediation study found that the intention to share knowledge is related to perceived organizational support, to voluntary behavior beyond the job description, and to the nature of the job itself.
  • Methods for the field. A practical introduction showed HRD researchers how to carry out social network analysis of social capital in R.
  • Teams. A study of virtual teams looked at how team leaders cope with creativity challenges.
  • Retention. A study of multinational corporations examined career growth opportunity and turnover intention, with organizational commitment as the mediator.
  • Dissertation. My doctoral dissertation built a typology of knowledge-sharing intentions in multinational companies using latent class analysis.

Selected publications

  • Han, S. H., Yoon, S. W., & Chae, C. (2020). Building social capital and learning relationships through knowledge sharing: A social network approach of management students’ cases. Journal of Knowledge Management, 24(4), 921–939. https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-11-2019-0641
  • Han, S.-H., Chae, C., & Passmore, D. L. (2019). Social network analysis and social capital in human resource development research: A practical introduction to R use. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 30(2), 219–243. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.21341
  • Han, S.-H., Yoon, D.-Y., Suh, B., Li, B., & Chae, C. (2019). Organizational support on knowledge sharing: A moderated mediation model of job characteristics and organizational citizenship behavior. Journal of Knowledge Management, 23(4), 687–704. https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-03-2018-0213
  • Lee, J., Kim, S. B., Chae, C., & Lee, J. (2019). Career growth opportunity on turnover intention: The mediating role of organizational commitment in multinational corporations. International Journal of Human Resource Studies, 9(4), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.5296/ijhrs.v9i4.15245
  • Chae, C. (2018). Typology of knowledge-sharing intentions in multinational companies: Cross-national comparative research with latent class analysis [Doctoral dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University].
  • Han, S. J., Chae, C., Macko, P., Park, W., & Beyerlein, M. (2017). How virtual team leaders cope with creativity challenges. European Journal of Training and Development, 41(3), 261–276. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJTD-10-2016-0073