[5] Organizations have recognized that knowledge constitutes a valuable intangible asset for creating and sustaining competitive advantages.
[6] However, technology constitutes only one of the many factors that affect the sharing of knowledge in organizations, such as organizational culture, trust, and incentives.
[8] In the digital world, websites and mobile applications enable knowledge or talent sharing between individuals and/or within teams.
In industrial organization, Bhattacharya, Glazer, and Sappington (1992) have emphasized the importance of knowledge sharing in research joint ventures in a context of imperfect competition.
[32] In the theory of incomplete contracts, Rosenkranz and Schmitz (1999, 2003) have used the Grossman-Hart-Moore property rights approach to study how knowledge sharing is affected by the underlying ownership structure.
[15] Larger companies have a higher tendency to invest more on knowledge management processes, although competitive benefits are gained regardless of organization size.
[7] In an organization, five distinct conditions of the organizational culture have a positive effect on knowledge-sharing: communication and coordination between groups, trust, top management support, the reward system, and openness.
[4] Concerning the communication and coordination between groups condition, the organizations that are centralized with a bureaucratic management style can hinder the creation of new knowledge whereas a flexible decentralized organizational structure encourages knowledge-sharing.
The combination of evaluation and reward as an accountability-inducing management practice has been presented as and effective way for enhancing knowledge sharing.
[42] Supervisors and managers have a key role in this – they need to create a work culture which encourages employees to share their knowledge.
[47] Barriers are considered to be obstacles that hinder knowledge acquisition, creation, sharing and transfer in and between organizations based on individual, socio-organizational or technological reasons.
According to Maier et al. (2002) understanding of the process supporting knowledge management enables further consideration of the obstacles and facilitating factors.