[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.
IT systems can provide codification, personalization, electronic repositories for information and can help people locate each other to communicate directly.
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.
[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.