The Factors that Influence Knowledge Sharing Among Administrative Employees At Taibah University

Abstract

The study aims to investigate the significant effects of individual factors on knowledge sharing among individuals. Administrative employees are regarded as a key role to achieve the effective performance of the organization via sharing their knowledge with others to perform working tasks in an efficient way. It may be possible when knowledge is successfully shared. In spite of various studies on this topic have been conducted, few researches have been done on knowledge sharing and individual factors in developing countries such as Saudi Arabia which is in early age of knowledge domain. Deductive approach is applied with simple random sampling technique to distribute questionnaires to 364 administrative employees at Taibah University, Saudi Arabia. The hypotheses are formulated based on insights drawn by Social Exchange Theory (SET) and Conservation of Resources Theory (COR). Data is analysed quantitatively using a structural equation modelling (SEM) technique in Smart-PLS after cleaning the data using SPSS (version 22). The findings show significant relationship among all the study variables. This paper assists employers, employees, policy makers, and scholars to understand the factors that can foster knowledge sharing. This study also helps to extend literature of knowledge management area. This study found that interpersonal trust is most important variable affecting individual knowledge sharing. This research contributes to Saudi universities by combined individual factors under one framework and asserted negative impact of abusive supervision on knowledge sharing among administrative employees with applying COR and SET together.