The relationship between human resource practices and knowledge sharing in service firms

Abstract

Human resource practices have been found to be critical in knowledge sharing. Thus, this study examined the effects of job satisfaction, employee commitment, workplace friendship and team culture on knowledge sharing. This study used the survey research design. The respondents of the study were employees of the service industry. Multiple linear regression was used to analyse the data. The results show that employee commitment, workplace friendship and team culture explain the variance in knowledge sharing in service firms. The implications of the findings have been discussed at the end of the article.

Keywords

Employee commitment job satisfaction knowledge knowledge sharing service firms team culture workplace friendship

Introduction

Knowledge is an important organizational resource. It is a source of competitive advantage for firms (Wang et al., 2014), and it has been associated with firms’ and individuals’ performance (Kim and Yun, 2015). Hence, the need for firms to promote knowledge sharing (KS). Human resource (HR) practices such as job satisfaction, employee commitment, workplace friendship and team culture have been noted to be promoting and regulating employees’ behaviour (Swart and Kinnie, 2003). Furthermore, these HR practices have been found to be associated with employees’ pro-social behaviour (Çetin et al., 2012). Thus, it can be argued that these practices facilitate KS, since knowledge sharing is a pro-social behaviour (see Kankanhalli et al., 2005).

A plethora of studies exist on outcomes of job satisfaction, but it appears that its relationship with KS has received little attention from the researchers (Teh and Sun, 2012). However, job satisfaction has been found to promote citizen or pro-social behaviours that may include KS. This suggests that there is a relationship between job satisfaction and KS, thus this study explores this relationship.

In the same vein, workplace friendship which has received some attention in management literature has hardly been studied together with KS. That is, there is a dearth of studies on the effect workplace friendship has on KS, despite the fact that employees’ socialization can affect KS (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995). Hence, this study examines the relationship between workplace friendship and KS. Another HR practice that its relationship with KS has not been studied much is employee commitment, and therefore researchers have called for more studies to examine this relationship (Hilsop, 2002). In response, this study examines the effect of employee commitment on knowledge sharing.

Again, team culture which is an HR practice can also affect KS. However, the existing studies have shown contradictory results. While some studies have suggested that it can facilitate KS, others have found that it is a barrier to KS (Assudani, 2009; Riege, 2005). This suggests that the relationship between team culture and KS is inconclusive. This study thus seeks to resolve the inconsistency in the results.

The purpose of this is to ascertain the effects of job satisfaction, employee commitment, workplace friendship and team culture on KS. The article contributes to the KS literature by suggesting HR practices that promote KS. The rest of the article has been divided into four parts. Part one focuses on literature review and development of hypotheses. The second part addresses the methodology used, while part three presents the findings of the study. The last part focuses on discussions, conclusions and implications of the study.

Knowledge sharing

Bartol and Srivastava (2002) define KS as the process through which employees diffuse relevant knowledge to others across the organization. It is the process of mutually exchanging knowledge and jointly creating new knowledge (Van den Hooff and de Ridder, 2004); it implies synergistic collaboration of individuals who work towards a common goal (Boland and Tenkasi, 1995). KS helps transferring knowledge that resides with individuals to the organizational level, that is, it is converted into economic and competitive value for the organization (Hendriks, 1999). KS is a central process of knowledge management (Eisenhardt and Santos, 2002) and has received considerable attention (Cummings, 2004; Mir and Mir, 2009). KS occurs when an individual is willing to assist as well as learn from others in the development of new competencies (McDermott, 1999; Sawhney and Prandelli, 2000). The ultimate goal of KS is the attempt at transferring all individuals’ experiences and knowledge to organizational assets and resources, in order to advance the overall organizational effectiveness (Yang and Wan, 2004). Wah (1999) claims that a major obstacle to knowledge management is the propensity of people to hoard knowledge. Hoarding knowledge does seem to be natural, particularly under conditions of economic competition where ‘knowledge is power’. For example, sales staff may face quota pressures and strong competition with each other and therefore may decide to hoard their knowledge. It is imperative therefore to find HR practices that facilitate KS.

Job satisfaction and KS

Job satisfaction has been overly researched from different perspectives, mostly from ethical, economic and humanitarian perspectives (Chelladurai, 1999). It follows that it is of great importance to firms in managing people and performance. Job satisfaction is about employees’ contentment of the rewards they receive on their jobs (Spector, 1997). It relates to employees’ perception about fairness which results in citizenship-type behaviours (Burgard and Gorlitz, 2014). It also relates employees’ satisfaction with promotional opportunities and the nature of their job, attitude of supervisors, working conditions and wages and salaries (Belias et al., 2015). It has the potentials of improving employees’ and organizational performance (Reilly et al., 2014; Yang and Hwang, 2014). Job satisfaction influences employees to engage in duties that might not be part of their job specifications (Bateman and Organ, 1983; Borman and Motowidlo, 1997).These extra role may include KS with other employees. Teh and Sun (2012) in their study noted that job satisfaction significantly and positively influences employees’ KS behaviours. Bateman and Organ (1983) also asserted that employees with higher levels of job satisfaction show more of the pro-social behaviour. This implies that job satisfaction is associated with KS. This study therefore hypothesizes that

H1: Job satisfaction affects KS.

Employee commitment and KS

Employees’ commitment represents their affection for and involvement in a firm (Meyer and Allen, 1997). Like job satisfaction, it influences employees to go an extra mile to engage in activities that are not part of their formal duties (Choi, 2006). Employee commitment has been noted to affect firms’ outcomes (Morrow et al., 2012). Committed employees are less likely to defect to other firms and therefore have been integral part of most organizations’ knowledge management strategy. According to Anvari, Mansor, Rahman, Rahman and Chermahini (2014), employees’ commitment is associated with KS. This is as a result of their emotional attachment to the firm and continued efforts to improve performance (Hashim and Tan, 2015). Some other studies (Casimir et al., 2012; Tangaraja et al., 2015) have also predicted that employees’ commitment affects KS. From these, this current study argues that employees’ commitment affects KS in service organizations. Consequently, this study hypothesizes that:

H2: Employee commitment has positive effect on KS.

Workplace friendship and KS

Berman, West and Richter (2002) explain workplace friendships as the informal and personal interactions that occur among employees within an organization. Workplace friend may be determined by personality and sex composition (Sias and Cahill, 1998; Sias et al., 2004). It forms the basis of social capital that people can rely on to achieve individual and organizational targets (Bowler and Brass, 2006). It is a source of emotional support (Kram and Isabella, 1985) and a potent tool for employees to ensure interactive justice (Chen et al., 2013). It is also promotes employees’ altruistic behaviour (Fine, 1986) which may include KS. Furthermore, workplace friendship has a positive effect on several organizational outcomes such as positive organizational commitment and loyalty, communication and coordination, positive workplace attitude and social support (Mao et al., 2012; Sias et al., 2004; Song, 2006). It is an informal communication channel that employees rely on for and to share knowledge and information (Rawlins, 1992; Sias, 2005), and communication is a key ingredient for developing and building workplace friendship (Sias et al., 2012). This implies the flow and sharing of knowledge among employees. Becerra-Fernandez et al. (2004) found socialization as a facilitator of KS. Meanwhile, socialization has been found to be one of the foundations of workplace friendship. It can therefore be argued that workplace friendship positively affects KS. This study hypothesizes that:

H3: Workplace friendship positively affects KS

Team culture and KS

The effect of culture, especially collective on KS, has been recognized by researchers (Wendling et al., 2013). Thus, team culture can stimulate KS due to the consistent interaction of members (Monalisa et al., 2008; Hu et al., 2009). However, team culture can become a barrier to KS between and among teams, especially when rewards are based on team performance (Assudani, 2009; O’Dell and Grayson, 1998; Riege, 2005). In another study, it was noted that team members share their knowledge, even when it is not institutionalized (Mueller, 2012). Furthermore, the quality of communication influences KS among team members (Chen et al., 2013). These studies suggest that team culture is associated with KS. From these, this study concludes that:

H4: Team culture positively affects KS.

Research design, sample and sampling technique

This study used survey as the research design. This was to provide a numeric description of the relationship between HR practices and knowledge sharing (see Babbie (2004). Furthermore, the survey served as the basis for employing a questionnaire for data collection and statistical tools for the analysis. Again, for the purpose of generalization, survey design was deemed fit for this study. The respondents were selected from the service industry in Ghana, specially Accra where the headquarters of most the companies are located. The respondents were selected based on their willingness to partake in the study. In all, 569 responses were used in the final analysis; 56.6 per cent were males while 43.4 per cent females. Most (45.3 per cent) of the respondents were within the ages of 20–29 years. Again, majority (35.1 per cent) of them were from the financial services sector. Those from the telecommunications sector accounted for 19.0 per cent, while those of the education sector constituted 19.5 per cent. Additionally, those from the civil service were 14.6 per cent, and those in the other service sectors accounted for 11.8 per cent.

Measures

The measures for this study were adapted from the extant literature, and their validity has been confirmed. All the items measuring the constructs are presented in Table 1. The items measuring employee commitment were derived from Chang and Chang (2009) while that of job satisfaction (JB) were borrowed from Scarpello and Campbell (1983). Similarly, this study used the scales by Neilsen et al. (2000) to measure workplace friendship (WF). Furthermore, items were adapted from Stashevsky and Koslowsky (2006) to measure team culture, while this study relied on items from Bock et al. (2005) to measure knowledge sharing. To make it easier for respondents understand the scale, the study used a 5-point Likert-type scale for the measurement; 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neutral, 4 = agree and 5 = strongly agree.

Table 1.

Reliability and validity test.

Constructs/items	M	SD	Factor loadings	Cronbach’s αs
Employee commitment (EC)				0.83
I care about the future development of this company	3.79	1.149	0.70
I feel I have a promising future if I stay with this company	3.60	1.092	0.74
I will pass on my working experience to new staff	3.78	1.066	0.70
I will feel guilty if I leave this company	3.91	1.023	0.70
Job satisfaction (JB)				0.76
I am satisfied to try my own methods of doing the job	3.50	1.048	0.75
I am satisfied with the way my co-workers get along with each other	3.50	1.029	0.70
I am satisfied with the way my job provides for steady employment	3.50	1.043	0.70
Workplace friendship (WF)				0.81
I have the opportunity to get to know my co-workers	3.68	1.014	0.72
I am able to work with my co-workers to collectively solve problems	3.76	0.974	0.76
Communication among employees is encouraged by my organization	3.71	0.999	0.70
I socialize with co-workers outside the workplace	3.52	1.030	0.70
Team culture (TC)				0.90
In my organization, there is always someone to address work problems	3.57	1.079	0.69
My team supports knowledge and technical information sharing	3.62	1.011	0.79
This company coordinates teamwork through team leaders	3.62	1.002	0.74
This company’s employees are flexible about meeting to discuss problems and coordinate teamwork	3.53	1.036	0.76
This company teams possess a fine spirit	3.47	1.066	0.73
Members of this team have a sense of participation	3.54	1.042	0.73
Knowledge sharing (KS)				0.75
My knowledge sharing with other organizational members is valuable to me	3.70	1.027	0.70
I share a lot of my professional experience with my colleagues	3.75	0.989	0.70
I share new methodology for performing a task with others	3.72	0.967	0.69
I share my knowledge with others	3.70	0.988	0.70

Validity and reliability

For determining the validity and reliability of the items and constructs used in this study, Cronbach’s αs and factor loadings were used. Cronbach’s α for employee commitment was 0.83, while that of job satisfaction was 0.76. Similarly, Cronbach’s αs for workplace friendship (0.81), team culture (0.90) and KS (0.75) were high (see Table 1). This means that internal consistency and reliability have been achieved (Hair et al., 2006). Furthermore, the factor loadings were high, and there was no issue of cross loadings. This suggests that the constructs, discriminates and measures are free from common method bias (Bagozzi and Yi, 2012). The means and standard deviations of the items are presented in Table 1.

Hypotheses testing and results

To test the hypotheses, multiple linear regression was performed. To make sure that no assumption is breached, initial analysis was performed. For example, multicollinearity was taken care of by subtracting the aggregate scores from the centred variables. Furthermore, the correlations among the constructs were measured, and the findings are presented in Table 2. All the independent constructs (see Table 2) were statistically correlated with the dependent variable (KS). These results provided a good ground for the hypotheses to be tested through multiple linear regression.

Table 2.

Means (M), standard deviations (SD) and correlations between knowledge sharing and predictor variables (N = 569).

Variable	M	SD	A	B	C	D
Knowledge sharing	3.70	0.740	0.592*	0.555*	0.569*	0634*
Employee commitment (A)	3.61	0.816	–	0.654*	0.564*	0.574*
Job satisfaction (B)	3.46	0.782		–	0.560*	0.650*
Workplace friendship (C)	3.63	0.687			–	0.561*
Team culture (D)	3.56	0.792				–

* p< 0.05.

The four independent constructs: employee commitment, job satisfaction, workplace friendship and team culture were entered in no specific order. The four independent constructs produced the following results: adjusted R ² = 0.505, F(5,563)= 117.112, p < 0.001 (see Table 3). This result suggests that the four constructs together explains 50 per cent of the variance in knowledge sharing.

Table 3.

Multiple regression analysis summary.

Model		β	Standardized error beta (SEB)	Standardized beta (β)
R ² = 0.505, F(5,563)= 117.112; p < 0.001; p < 0.001; *p > 0.05
	Employee commitment (A)	0.217	0.038	0.239**
	Job satisfaction (B)	0.057	0.042	0.060***
	Workplace friendship (C)	0.225	0.042	0.209**
	Team culture (D)	0.318	0.039	0.341**

Further analysis revealed that team culture (β = 0.341, p < 0.001), workplace friendship (β = 0.209, p < 0.001) and employee commitment (β = 0.239, p < 0.001) are significantly associated with KS. It also shows that the relationship between job satisfaction and KS is not significant (β = 0.060, p > 0.05) (see Table 3). The findings mean that team culture explains 34 per cent of the variance in knowledge sharing, while workplace friendship and employee commitment explain 20.1 per cent and 24 per cent of the variance in knowledge sharing respectively. Based on these results, hypotheses two, three and four (H2, H3 and H4) were accepted, while hypothesis one (H1) was rejected.

Discussions, conclusions and implications

The objective of this study was to examine the effects of employee commitment, job satisfaction, workplace friendship and team culture on KS. This study concludes that employee commitment, workplace friendship and team culture predicts KS in service firms.

Some previous study studies (Bateman and Organ, 1983; Borman and Motowidlo, 1997; Teh and Sun, 2012) have argued that job satisfaction influences employees to engage in socially responsible activities such as KS. Contrary to this claim and this study’s hypothesis, job satisfaction does not affect KS. This result might be attributed to competition for promotional opportunities (Belias et al., 2015). Job satisfaction is related to promotion opportunities, and so if knowledge sharing would block that opportunity, then the employees will not share their knowledge.

Employee commitment effect on KS might be attributed to employee’s commitment to the growth and success of their organization. Committed employees care about the future development of their organization and feel guilty if they engage in activities that do not promote the growth of the firm (Chang and Chang, 2009). Their emotional attachment to the firm results in social initiatives (Hashim and Tan, 2015) such as sharing knowledge with colleagues. This result supports the findings of some existing studies (Anvari et al., 2014; Casimir et al., 2012).

Additionally, employees sharing their valuable knowledge with other members will demand that co-workers get along with each other. Employees normally share their knowledge when they feel that everyone in their organization is a true friend. Again, this study seems to corroborate Boateng and Agyemang’s (2015) findings. They noted that employees normally share their knowledge with colleagues they see as friends. Informal personal and social interactions are vital for KS. This is especially the case for tacit knowledge where codification of knowledge is difficult. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) identified socialization is the medium through which knowledge is shared. Since workplace friendship is built and developed through informal and personal interactions (Berman et al., 2002), its effect on KS is consistent. Workplace friendship offers employees the opportunity to get to know each other, communicate among themselves and socialize. This helps them to share their working experience, especially to new staff (Morrison, 2004). Some employees take the opportunity of their friendship with others to obtain knowledge which they would find it difficult to get but for the friendship (Rawlins, 1992; Sias, 2005).

Also consistent with some existing studies (Chen et al., 2013; Mueller, 2012), this study found that for KS to occur, employees should always be ready to address work problems together. This should be coordinated through team leaders (Stashevsky and Koslowsky, 2006). Similarly, KS among employees will demand the team possess a fine spirit and a sense of participation. This might not be enough; there should be flexibility, coordination, quality of communication and constant interaction in the team (Chen et al., 2013). This might also depend on the reward system, where team instead of individual’s performance is rewarded, members will be willing to share knowledge.

These findings imply that service firms should encourage employees to discuss problems in teams, and the meeting times should be flexible. Again, companies can promote a team culture by giving assignments that will demand expertise from every unit of the organization. Furthermore, the findings of this study imply that managers should promote activities that encourage workplace friendship. These may include face-to-face meetings and social events like end of year party.

This study is not without limitations. The study used data from one industry; therefore, future studies may replicate this study in different industries for a wider application of the findings. Also, future studies may explore the features of a team that promote KS since this study did not examine that.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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