2. Literature Review
2.1. Theoretical Foundations
Social practice and social network theories provide the theoretical foundations to support our arguments of knowledge sharing. Bourdieu’s theory of practices (1977) envisaged apprehension as taking place in a practical universe that was situated in a practical space. He argued that social behavior is “a continual accomplishing of actions in the implementation of natives’ strategies in accordance with their practical mastery of situations.” He also proposed the notion of habitus to capture “the permanent internalization of the social order” (Bourdieu, 1990) and proposed the agent’s practice as “his or her capacity for invention and improvisation.” Postill (2001) has indicated that Bourdieu’s notion of “fields” indicates “specialist domains of practice with their own ‘logic’ that are constituted by a unique combination of species of capital, e.g., financial capital, symbolic capital (prestige, renown) or social capital (connections).”
Concepts of “fields” and “habitus” provided the foundations of researches about knowledge sharing. Brown and Duguid (1991) have indicated that knowledge is enhanced from the perspective of practice. Practice is “a way of talking about shared historical and social resources, frameworks, and perspectives that can sustain mutual engagement in action (Wenger, 1998, pp. 5).” Practice also circulates knowledge and transfers tacit knowledge explicitly (Brown & Duguid 2001). Lave and Wenger (1991) argued that knowledge sharing of practices was a process of situated learning and could be viewed as social practices associated with designated legitimate peripheral participation. Reckwitz (2002) has indicated the importance of social practices as bodily and mental routines of practice theories.
Social practice emphasizes “the inherently socially negotiated character of
meaning and the interested, concerned characters of the thought and action of persons-in-activity (Lave & Wenger 1991).” The CoP was proposed to refer to a kind of privileged site with a tight and effective loop of insight, problem identification, learning, and knowledge production in organizations (Brown & Duguid, 1991). Lave and Wenger (1991) indicated that “learning as increasing participation in CoPs concerns the whole person acting in the world.” In this decade, Brown and Duguid (2000) have proposed a term “network of practices (NoPs)” to indicate the social space of an electronic network where individuals working on similar problems have self-organized to help each other and share perspectives about their occupational practice or common interests. Teigland (2003) argued that NoPs range from communities of practice to electronic networks of practice. Participation in NoPs means engaging in knowledge acquisition and contributing to work practices, whether via face-to-face or Internet techniques. Consequently, the strategy of knowledge sharing is limited by an individual’s social network that encompasses physical and virtual relationships.
2.1.1. Network Benefits of Knowledge Sharing
The social network of an individual consists of his/her informal interpersonal relations. Researchers indicated that social factors in networks, such as co-location (Allen, 1977; Kraut et al. 1990, Cummings, 2004), demographic similarity (Pelled 1996), and group member diversity (Cummings, 2004), as well as the relational properties (Wellman & Wortley 1990; Cross and Cummings, 2004) have important effects on knowledge sharing (Cross, Rice & Parker, 2001b). The use of social contacts with colleagues and the resources provided by the contacts positively affect individuals’ work performance (Cross & Cummings, 2004) and knowledge creation (Teigland & Wasko, 2000).
An individual’s advantage of knowledge exchange is based on his or her control
over the spread of information. Cross and Cummings (2004) have verified that the number of acquisition ties significantly affects knowledge workers’ performance ratings. Friedkin’s research (Friedkin et al. 1994) indicated that a cohesive network among teachers enhances their performance. While people with high cohesive networks are linked by other factors besides interaction and perceived similarity, higher network density would decrease the effects of the knowledge transmittal between people (Burt 1992). McFadyen and Cannella’s (2004) study has indicated that strength of interpersonal relations had a higher marginal effect on knowledge creation. While Lin (2001) has proposed that weaker ties facilitate status attainment, Teigland and Wasko (2000) indicated that the perception of a worker’s having stronger relationships with collocated colleagues is negatively associated with knowledge innovation (Teigland & Wasko 2000).
2.1.2. Gift-Giving Attitudes of Knowledge Sharing
Network ties, created through knowledge sharing, include relationships of knowledge acquisition and knowledge contribution. Reciprocity is critical to maintaining the intimate relationships of exchanges (Nahapiet & Ghosha 1998).
Participants receive meaning retrospectively from the responses they generate at some point in the future. Lack of reciprocity will lead to the termination of a relationship (van Tilburg, van Sonderen & Ormel 1991). However, some participants voluntarily provide a benefit to others with the expectation of some future return, even though the exact nature of the return is unclear.
Bourdieu (1977) argued that a critical point of exchange is one that “constitutes as reversible a practice that agents construe in performance as irreversible.” He proposed a concept of gift exchange and emphasized its playing on the timing or tempo of a transaction. He indicated that “it is all a question of style, which meansin this case timing and the choice of occasion; for the same act—giving, giving in return,
offering one’s service, paying a visit, etc.—can have completely different meanings at different times, coming as it may at the right or wrong moment (pp. 6).”
Researchers who seek intrinsic benefits in the virtual world have emphasized gift-giving attitudes toward knowledge contribution (Rheingold 1993; Kollock 1999).
People engage in social contribution with the expectation of social rewards (Burt, 1992; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). Though reciprocation is not an explicit guarantee of equivalent-value feedback at a future date, people can through their contributions acquire personal resources that represent symbolic capital, which is used to gain power or social status (Lin, 2001). Individuals contribute knowledge to receive intrinsic benefits from a self-evaluation of the activity itself, rather than to receive external rewards (Wasko & Faraj, 2005). In other words, people contribute knowledge because they feel good in doing so (Kollock, 1999; Wasko & Faraj, 2005). Gaining support from network members (Plickert et al., 2007), recognition among peers, and highly valued aspects of professional identity (Lamb and Davidson, 2005) are significant motivations for knowledge contribution.
Kollock (1999) has argued that the favors and benefits provided in online communities are public goods, i.e., goods from which all may benefit. A command hierarchy and exchange economy is the basis for the conventional principles governing the cultivation of a community. Recently, Rheingold (1993) has described the interactions within one online community as a gift economy and Raymond (2003) has applied gift cultures to describing online behaviors. A gift culture assumes that online social status is determined not by what you control but by what you give away (Raymond, 2003). Gift cultures are adapted not to scarcity but to abundance. This abundance makes reputation among one’s peers the only available measure of competitive success (Raymond 2003).
2.1.3. Positional Advantage of Knowledge Sharing
The primary stage of knowledge acquisition involves knowing what another person knows and being able to gain access to that person (McDermott, 1999; Cross et
al., 2001a; Borgatti & Cross, 2003). Since people who encounter problems contact
experts who have solutions, knowing who has expertise is an important factor that dominates support-seeking behavior (Lin & Chiou, 2008). Who is prestigious when engaging in knowledge exchanges? A participant about whom other participants express positive sentiments when recalling knowledge acquisition is a prestigious person in their community (Lin 2001). That is, prestigious people are major channels of relational information who maintain a large number of direct contacts with or adjacent to many other actors (Burt, 1992; Wasserman & Faust, 1994).Greenberg (1964) indicated that in the pre-Internet era, individuals who occupied a central location in a social network could easily reach others for personal discussion and could be easily reached themselves. In recent decades, researchers have shown that a person moves closer to the center as he or she becomes more involved in team activities through computer networks (Bradner et al., 1998). Lai and Wong (2002) also argue that central people are found to be active and efficient in transmitting information within the group. Central people (or prestigious people) epitomize the advantage of knowledge sharing.
As knowledge exchanges through virtual work become more common, researchers have indicated that online social status is determined by what you give away, not what you control (Kollock, 1999; Raymond, 2003). Prestige has become a measure of online success. Walsh and Bayma (1996) also indicate that computer-mediated communication (CMC) provides new opportunities and resources to scientists located at less-prominent institutions; they argue that those scientists can gain prestige through the Internet. People who often contribute knowledge to
community participants will take on central roles (Wenger, 2002). Central persons would attain higher social status and prestige (Knoke & Burt, 1983).
The influence of boundary spanning on organizational learning has also been investigated (Burt, 1992). Ties crossing organizational boundaries are positively related to organizational competitiveness (McEvily & Zaheer, 1999) or individual performance (Cross and Cummings 2004). Wenger (1998) indicated that people in charge of special projects across functional units often find themselves brokering.
Fielding et al. (2005) argued that sharing work across the school with everyone in it can maximize the chance of good practice being transferred internally (Fielding et al.
2005). Socially brokerage persons of knowledge sharing networks have positional advantages (or social resource benefits) in contacts and have opportunities of knowledge brokerage.