Is a strategic intangible asset in any organization because it is an invaluable

source of a firm’s capacity to create, deliver and appropriate value (Grant 1996;

Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995) Managers constantly seek ways to facilitate knowledge

exchange among individuals within and between units This issue is crucial, because if

knowledge is not shared within an organization, it is not being effectively exploited and

can impair the organization’s effectiveness” (Hansen 1999, 2002; Lin et al. 2009; Lu

et al. 2006).

Knowledge sharing between organizational members, defined as activities of transferring

or disseminating knowledge from one person or group to another (Lee 2001), is of

growing research interest (Chowdhury 2005) due to its potential to increase the capacity of

an organization to innovate (Daellenbach and Davenport 2004) and to compete more

effectively. Research has shown that knowledge sharing can positively affect both solution

quality and speed (Lander and Lesser 1997). As Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) argued,

knowledge sharing is crucial to improving firm performance in that through knowledge

exchange, units are able to capitalize on existing knowledge bases residing in different

parts of the organization and further develop new platforms which are crucial to developing

and introducing new products and services to the market in a timely manner. Thus, a

key managerial challenge is how to facilitate and motivate employees to share knowledge