Science Research Management ›› 2022, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (1): 143-152.
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School of Business Administration, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, Dalian 116025, Liaoning, China#br#
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Abstract: Tacit knowledge provides support for technological innovation and sustainable development of enterprises. Research on sharing, integrating and utilizing tacit knowledge inside and outside the enterprise has received wide attention from scholars. However, in the existing research, there is little attention on how to promote tacit knowledge sharing among enterprises. This paper selects 186 companies in knowledge-intensive industries in the eastern coastal areas of China as samples, and explores the relationship between knowledge governance of core enterprises and tacit knowledge sharing among enterprises in the open situation. The study found that knowledge governance and tacit knowledge sharing between organizations are significantly positively correlated. Organizational openness plays a positive moderate significant role in the relationship between market-based knowledge governance and tacit knowledge sharing among organizations, hierarchical knowledge governance and tacit knowledge sharing among organizations, but the moderate of social knowledge governance and organizational knowledge sharing relationship is not significant. This paper makes a theoretical analysis and empirical research on the impact of corporate knowledge governance on tacit knowledge sharing, and discusses the role of organizational openness in the impact of knowledge governance on tacit knowledge sharing, and draws the following conclusions: First, market-based knowledge governance has a positive impact on tacit knowledge sharing among organizations, that is, market-based knowledge governance based on contract or transaction control can promote the occurrence of tacit knowledge sharing between organizations. This conclusion is contrary to the hypothesis of this paper. The reason may come from two aspects. First, the long-term orientation of contract control may reduce the possibility of opportunism in cooperation, thus promoting tacit knowledge sharing. Second, the changes in the situation of Chinese organizations in the Internet era may lead to changes in the opposite direction. With the cost reduction of knowledge sharing in the Internet context, institution-based trust has gradually become the basis for building an ideal partnership. Formal contracts are no longer understood as "a signal of distrust", thus leading to market-based knowledge governance to organizations. The sharing of tacit knowledge has an impact from suppression to promotion. Second, social knowledge governance has a positive impact on tacit knowledge sharing. In the process of inter-organizational cooperation, social mechanisms such as trust can not only create self-discipline awareness among the partners, but also inhibit their own opportunistic behavior. It will also give the partners a sense of security and willingness to share their tacit knowledge and gain enough confidence to benefit from it. Third, hierarchical knowledge governance has a positive impact on tacit knowledge sharing. That is, core enterprises can reduce the opportunistic behavior in the cooperation process, maintain the overall interests of the network and coordinate the conflicts between partners through their knowledge power advantages, achieve the purpose of promoting tacit knowledge sharing between core enterprises and partners. Fourth, organizational openness has achieved a significant level of positive moderate in the impact of both market-based knowledge governance on tacit knowledge sharing and hierarchical knowledge governance on tacit knowledge sharing. At the same time, organizational openness has a positive role in the influence of social knowledge governance on tacit knowledge sharing, but the moderate effect is not significant. When the breadth of the company′s access to external knowledge is expanded maybe because the openness of the enterprise increases, the increase of new cooperation opportunities is usually not conducive to the formation of trust among business partners. It is especially important that the virtual partnerships built by enterprises with the help of Internet information technology are mainly based on institutional trust. Therefore, the improvement of organizational openness will not increase the degree of interpersonal trust between partners, or even weaken social mechanisms, so that the moderate of the relationship between the social knowledge governance and tacit knowledge sharing is not significant. The conclusion of this paper is that knowledge-intensive enterprises in the Internet context promote the sharing of tacit knowledge among organizations through knowledge governance, thus improving the efficiency and effectiveness of knowledge activities. On the one hand, companies can promote the sharing and utilization of tacit knowledge among organizations by establishing formal contractual relationships with partners, a high degree of trust, and the use of core companies. On the other hand, although different types of knowledge governance have different influence mechanisms on tacit knowledge among organizations, organizational openness has a positive moderate effect in the influence of knowledge governance on tacit knowledge sharing among organizations. Enterprises can appropriately improve the openness of enterprises under the premise of perfecting the knowledge governance mechanism. Furthermore, this study also finds that the impact of market-based knowledge governance based on contract control on the tacit knowledge sharing between organizations has been transformed from inhibition to promotion. Enterprises should pay full attention to the positive role of formal contracts and rules in the process of cooperation on tacit knowledge sharing between organizations. This study only selects enterprises with knowledge-intensive industries in the eastern coastal areas of China as samples. Although it can better reflect the influence mechanism of corporate knowledge governance on tacit knowledge sharing among organizations in the Internet context, it cannot reflect the influence of regional factors. Subsequent studies can take this factor into account. At the same time, this study only explores the impact of three different knowledge governance mechanisms on tacit knowledge sharing among organizations. It does not explore the impact of the interaction of different knowledge governance mechanisms on tacit knowledge sharing among organizations. Therefore, the results are worthy of attention for follow-up studies.
Key words: knowledge governance, tacit knowledge sharing, organizational openness
Bai Jingkun, Li Sihan, Li Hongyan. Enterprise knowledge governance and tacit knowledge sharing from the perspective of openness[J]. Science Research Management, 2022, 43(1): 143-152.
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