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1. INTRODUCTION
Organizations acknowledge that knowledge is a valuable intangible asset for generating
competitive advantage (Miller & Shamsie, 1996). Knowledge sharing is a key to success for
any organization. It is the behavior of propagating the value able knowledge to other
members of an organization as well as to whole community which can get benefit through it.
All learning organizations get help of knowledge management for sharing of knowledge. It
creates linkages among employees, customers and suppliers through sharing of information
(Weathersby, 1999).
A lot of factors affect knowledge sharing behavior of individuals (Ryu et al., 2003;
Cabrera & Cabrera, 2002). Importance of human behavioral factors cannot be ignored for the
spreading of knowledge (Bollinger & Smith, 2001).In human behavior first factor for sharing
of knowledge is individual attitude towards knowledge sharing. Individual attitude towards
sharing of knowledge is too much important. Attitudes are related with feelings of
individuals. Sometime individuals are not willing to share the knowledge due to feelings of
insecurity. They feel fear from the loss of superiority and knowledge ownership after sharing
their distinctive ideas with others (Hislop, 2003; Yang, 2008). This unwillingness to share
knowledge is natural human affinity (Davenport & Prusak, 1998). It means that transferring
individuals’ knowledge into valuable organizational knowledge is not a simple phenomenon
and contains many challenges (Ryu et al., 2003). Therefore, it is vital to recognize those
factors that promote or limit knowledge sharing behavior.
Blogs, wiki and podcasts are continuously growing and popular information
technology applications. The difference between these are that blogs are text-based log
someone writes and updates, sort of like a web journal, whereas wiki is a web site anyone can
edit, add to, and update, like Wikipedia and podcast are an online audio or video broadcast
people can subscribe to or watch on a web site (usually hosted from a blog). According to
Merriam-Webster dictionary (2010) blog “a short for Weblog is a Web site that contains an
online journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.” Most
of businesses have started using blogs as a medium to prop up their products and services.
Individuals use blogs as the source of getting relevant information and use it as a platform for
sharing knowledge (Mohita, 2010). Blogs are renamed as social software which can be
employed for social networking as well as sharing of different information. Bloggers can use
blogs for collecting ideas and for revealing in-progress activities or works (Avram, 2006).
These blogs can be used as tool for creating, organizing and sharing knowledge as well as
developing personal knowledge management skills (Pettenati et al., 2007).
As blogs are a facilitating medium for quick communication of ideas, sharing of
knowledge and dispersions of information to a wide number of readers. Thus, it is not logical
for companies to ignore such potential channel. By keeping this view, many companies such
as Google and Microsoft etc use blogs as knowledge and information sharing tool both
internally and externally (Hsu & Lin, 2008). It is assumed that bloggers voluntarily publish
their knowledge in blogs (Karimi & Poo, 2009); however it is not uncommon that bloggers
are also affected by certain internal and external factors that limit or encourage them to share
knowledge in blogs. There are a large number of researches on knowledge management
phenomena but few have studied knowledge sharing and among those few studies, limited
studies have investigated knowledge sharing factors in context of blogs.
Present study investigates the influence of certain factors on online knowledge
sharing via blogs. These factors have different theoretical basis. The objective of this study is
to identify those factors that encourage or obstruct the knowledge sharing behaviors of
individuals in context of blogs. This study extracted factors from three different theories
namely Innovation Diffusion Theory, Social Capital Theory and Theory of Reasoned Action.
Two research questions of this research are:
1. What are the factors that support or obstruct knowledge sharing behaviors of users
in blogs?
2. Is intention to share knowledge shapes the actual behavior of knowledge sharing
in context of blogs or not?
then they will try to use new thing and share it with others after learning it (Wilton &
Pessemier, 1981). Intention is a very accurate variable for predicting behavior. When the
individuals have intention to learn something new and feel easy to use it then they will actual
enhance the sharing of their knowledge (Ajzen et al., 1985).
2.2.2 Relative advantage. Relative advantage is the degree to which an innovation is superior
from previous change or not (Rogers, 1995). Target group must consider to new
improvement better and truly advantageous from societal economic and technological
perspective (Chakravarty & Dubinsky, 2005). When the use of virtual communities is
intended advantageous then actual knowledge sharing will take place. On the basis of above
mentioned facts, it can be hypothesized:
Hypothesis 5: Social interaction ties have a positive effect on intention to share knowledge.
Relative Advantage
H4
H2 H1 Actual Knowledge
Attitude towards Intention to share
learning knowledge Sharing
Social
interaction ties
3. METHOD
The purpose of this study was to understand the user's attitudes and behavioral pattern
towards knowledge sharing in context of blogs. Individuals who frequently use blogs were
focus group of this study. Web based survey design was selected for this research. As survey
increases the generalizability of the results because researchers cannot direct the state of
respondents (Yalcinkaya, 2007); therefore it was chosen for this study.
3.2 Sample
Pakistani Bloggers were the target population of this study. In this research individual user of
blogs was unit of analysis. Purposive sampling technique was the sampling frame used in this
research. This purposive sampling presents the advantages of choosing sample according to
specific characteristics and situations (Ellahi & Manarvi, 2010). Simple random sampling
technique was used to choose sample from purposive sampling frame. The logic of purposive
sampling method was to include those subjects who actually use blogs for knowledge sharing
by having understanding of blogs. The original sample size for this study was 200 but only
120 out of 200 favorable responses were obtained. Researchers have supported1 this sample
size.
The web based questionnaires survey was distributed among the participants because
bloggers were accessed through internet and along with it web-surveys were relatively fast,
in-expensive and efficient method for data collection (Snow & Thomas, 2007). Similarly
response rate of web-based questionnaires is considerably higher (Kiernan et al., 2005) rather
than in paper-based surveys. The participants were assured that their responses would not be
revealed other than academic research purpose. After carrying out process of collecting data,
two statistical software - SPSS 17 and Smart-PLS - were used to conduct the empirical
analyses.
4. RESULTS
4.1 Background Information
The background information about bloggers’ skill, frequency of using blogs and purpose of
using blogs is given in Table1. According to frequency results majority of (45.8+45%)
respondents use blogs for knowledge collection and knowledge distribution. Only 9.2% use
blogs just time killing. Similarly majority of (77.5%) respondents use blogs daily. The
statistics presented in Table 2 also show that 65% of respondents considered themselves as
having excellent level of skill for operating blogs. Only 6% have poor level of skill and 35%
have good level of skill.
Reliability analysis depicts the internal consistency of scale items. It is used to ensure
that scale used is producing consistent results over times. Cronbach’s alpha is widely and
commonly used measure for reliability analysis. Its value range is between 0 and 12. The
value closer to 1.0 confirms significant reliability of scale. Table 2 shows Cronbach’s alpha
values. In light of previous researches and on basis of existing theories, six constructs were
studies included: actual knowledge sharing, intention to knowledge sharing, attitude towards
knowledge sharing, social interaction ties, perceived complexity and relative advantage. Each
construct was indicated with sign, such as actual knowledge sharing was denoted with AKS
such as AKSi, AKSii and AKSiii.
1
Bartlett et al. (2001) pointed out that if in a study, factor analysis and regression is planned then sample size should
not be less than 100 observations.
2
George and Mallery (2003) provided the following rules of thumb: Cronbach alpha = “> 0.9 =Excellent, > 0.8 = Good, >
0.7 = Acceptable, > 0.6 = Questionable, > 0.5 – Poor, and < 0.5= Unacceptable”
loadings on their respective items which were assigned to their corresponding indicator. It is
clear from figure that factor loading values are in suggested range, confirming validity of
constructs in model. The values of factor loadings show the strength of relation of items with
their respective constructs. The items giving higher loadings that are near to 1 depict strong
relation with constructs on which their loadings are computed. The highest factor loading
value in this model was of AKSiii (0.95) and the lowest value was of AKSi (0.69). Thus, all
factor loadings are significant and fairly high.
RAi
Perceived Relative
0.88
Advantage
RAii
*P value <0.05
0.79
0.85***
RAiii
PCi
0.80
PCii
0.56**
Theory of Planned Behavior Dimensions
PCiii
0.87
0.76*
Attitude towards Intention to share Actual Knowledge
AKSi
0.69
AKSii
Dimension
0.67**
SITi
AKSii
0.87
users. Less complex blogs will lead to a belief that the blog is more useful and more
enjoyable. There is also possibility of common methods bias because common method bias
inflates relationships between variables measured with help of self-reports data. However, an
attempt has been made to overcome this bias by using factor loadings to confirm construct
validity. Conway and Lance (2010) said that to show construct validity of the measures used
is one way to rule out substantial method effects. Despite of having intention to share
knowledge, individuals are prevented by psychological as well as environmental (physical)
factors for online sharing knowledge. This study has taken into account both types of factors
in order to understand breach between intention and action.
The study contributes to literature by explaining knowledge sharing attitudes and
behaviors in light of three different theories. In this way applicability of these theories was
verified in this one research. Further, this study is not relevant for a particular group of
professional or social group. It has taken into account almost all bloggers types beyond the
boundaries of particular organization or group, thus, it was an attempt to widening the study
generalisability. The results of this study can contribute to understanding of success factors of
both professional and personal blogs especially in context of developing countries. It can
serve as a basis for recognition of reasons of not only acceptance but also rejection decisions
about direct or indirect knowledge sharing by individuals.
The knowledge sharing behavior of bloggers in context of blogs shows that blogs can
serve as less costly and quickly assimilated marketing and networking tool for professional
organizations in developing country. The findings provide guideline for companies using
blogs as marketing channel, to gain insight into drivers of knowledge sharing. Using blogs
they can target a large number of audiences worldwide beyond the boundaries of ethnicity,
locality, race or religion etc. In this study the knowledge sharing aspect in blogs also draws a
conclusion that these blogs have enough potential to act as valuable medium of learning and
teaching in developing countries. Thus, it provides an opportunity for academic institutes as
well, take an example of few universities in world like Harvard University and the University
of Iowa that have taken an initiative to use blogging tools for knowledge sharing.
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