医疗保健中的知识共享和创新工作行为英文文献和中文翻译(6)
Dorenbosch, van Engen &Verhagen, 2005), and affect their motivation toengage in extra-role behaviours through pro-cedural justice, fairness and meritocracy (DeJong & den Hartog, 2007; Janssen, 2004;Ramamoorthy et al., 2005; Reuvers et al.,2008). Our work instead shifts attention to theinpidual level of analysis, where evidence isfocused on the role of personality, motivation,cognitive ability, job characteristics and moodstates (Anderson et al., 2004). Understanding whether – and how – engaging in specificbehaviours can also affect IWBs remains anoverlooked area of investigation, which thisstudy seeks to address. There is evidence thatknowledge acquisition enables employeesand organizations to innovate (Lewin, Massini& Peeters, 2011; Zahra & George, 2002),and also that knowledge sharing promotesthe recipient’s (inpidual or organization)innovativeness (Liu & Phillips, 2011; Tsai,2001). This leaves an unexplored grey area:Does knowledge sharing also promote theinnovativeness of the person who does thesharing? To clarify this point, we disentangledthree possible mechanisms: (i) an indirecteffect, grounded in past research, wherebyknowledge sharing creates, through reciproc-ity, the conditions for future knowledge acqui-sition; (ii) a direct effect, thus far unexplored,whereby knowledge sharing brings into play aprocess of knowledge recombination andre-elaboration that stimulates the generation,promotion and application of new ideas; (iii) adistal effect, likewise unexplored, whereby thesame contingencies that trigger knowledgesharing also have effects on the engagement inIWBs. Contrary to expectations, our resultssupported only the two unexplored mecha-nisms (ii) and (iii), whereas they did notsupport mechanism (i).The absence of an indirect effect (based onfuture reciprocity) of knowledge sharing oninnovativeness calls into question whetheracquiring knowledge is in itself enough topromote IWBs, at least in professional servicecontexts. Although we did not investigatewhether employees interpret knowledgesharing behaviours as a generous gift or as anexplicit trade (Konstantinou & Fincham, 2011),our results do confirm that knowledge sharingis an effective tactic for acquiring externalknowledge through reciprocation. However, itappears that the knowledge thereby acquireddoes not necessarily lead to IWBs. Drawingon previous research, we could argue thishappens because knowledge in professionalservices is so expert, experiential, intangibleand specialized that recipients – when theycome to reciprocate – might not be aware ofwhat knowledge is most relevant to helpingthe sharer innovate, or they might hoard theirrelevant knowledge without being sanctionedby the sharer (Freidson, 1988; Sharma, 1997;von Nordenflycht, 2010). Thus, reciprocationmight not benefit IWB either because recipi-ents opportunistically hoard the truly relevantinformation (i.e., provide enough knowledgenot to appear ‘empty-handed’, but not enoughto compromise personal autonomy), or unin-tentionally communicate knowledge that doesnot fit with the sharers’ work (i.e., recipientsdo not know ‘what’ to reciprocate), is not clearor ready-for-use (i.e., recipients do not know‘how’ to reciprocate), or is relevant only foreveryday work (McDermott & O’Dell, 2001;Szulanski, 1996; Wang & Noe, 2010). Overall,our study casts doubts on sharing knowledgeto induce reciprocation as an effective tactic forfacilitating personal IWB, and in particular, onthe value of reciprocated knowledge.Having thus ruled out reciprocation, we cannow consider whether the act itself of manag-ing and elaborating internal knowledge(inherent in the sharing process) stimulatesemployees’ IWB. Our findings contributesome new, inpidual-level insights into theadvantages of knowledge sharing. Previousstudies have demonstrated the value of knowl-edge sharing at the organizational level, notinghow systems where collectives of inpidualsmobilize their knowledge develop heightenedcapacities to adapt, improvise and change(Maurer, Bartsch & Ebers, 2011; Nonaka, 1994).Research on ‘absorptive capacity’ (Cohen &Levinthal, 1990; Lane, Koka & Pathak, 2006;Zahra & George, 2002), in particular, hasshown how knowledge sharing behaviourswhich aggregate into ‘internal meta-routines’(Lewin, Massini & Peeters, 2011) can affectorganizations’ transformation and exploitationcapacities (Volberda, Foss & Lyles, 2010). Ourstudy instead highlights how, at the inpiduallevel, knowledge sharing behaviours can alsodirectly affect employees’ capabilities to trans-form and exploit internal knowledge. In otherwords, while Zahra and George (2002)observed that organizational ‘knowledgeexploitation requires the sharing of relevantknowledge among members of the firm inorder to promote mutual understandingand comprehension’ (p. 194), we here arguethat inpidual knowledge exploitation alsorequires knowledge sharing to improve thatinpidual’s own understanding and compre-hension. Furthermore, knowledge sharing is adynamic behaviour that constantly calls intoquestion the viability of organizational rou-tines, and thus creates the conditions for theirinnovation. These results could contribute tothe research on organizational routines thatattempts to draw the line between mindlessreplication and effortful accomplishment(Becker, 2004). We believe knowledge sharingcan offer a way to overcome mindless replica-tion of routines. By requiring the elaboration,translation and recombination of internalknowledge, sharing infuses thoughtfulnessinto everyday work and so creates the condi-tions for challenging routines and engaging inIWB.Finally, the role of MOA antecedents is alsonotable. This work confirms the long-standing notion thatmotivation, opportunity and abilityare proximal antecedents that adeptly explainknowledge sharing behaviours (Ipe, 2003).Ourresults also confirm Siemsen, Roth andBalasubramanian (2008), insofar as motivationis the primary enabler of knowledge sharing,possibly suggesting that motivated profession-als might overcome problems in ability andopportunity, more than vice versa.