Knowledge Sourcing Effectiveness

Abstract

Much of the knowledge management (KM) literature focuses on ways to increase the volume of knowledge available to employees, ensure its quality, and improve its accessibility. Such supply-side arguments are limited to the extent that they do not address the demand for knowledge within organizations. This paper takes a novel approach to understanding how access to others' knowledge produces benefits by studying the extent to which individuals intentionally access each other's expertise, experience, insights, and opinions, which we term knowledge sourcing. A general model of knowledge sourcing, including contextual and dispositional antecedents and learning outcomes, is proposed and validated using survey data from a global organization. Knowledge sourcing explains a significant proportion of individuals' learning outcomes, but the strength of this effect is moderated both by the strength of individuals' learning orientations and the degree to which they find their jobs to be intellectually demanding. For researchers, this study extends existing knowledge by proposing, testing, and validating a new way to understand an important KM issue in organizations. Practitioners can use these findings to evaluate existing KM efforts and better target future KM interventions towards those individuals most likely to benefit.knowledge management, knowledge sourcing, knowledge transfer, learning motivation, performance

The Rich Get Richer: Enabling Conditions for Knowledge Use in Organizational Work Teams

“…Consistent with prior findings in the knowledge sourcing literature (Gray & Meister, 2004), we find that individuals executing more demanding work (as captured by the kilolines of new code written, a common measure of complexity for a project) are more likely to source knowledge (βProject Scale = 0.1564, p<0.01). In Column 2, we add the independent variables to the model.…”

“…A KR offers a practical solution to help people gain access to the "how-to" knowledge they would otherwise lack (Davenport & Prusak, 1998;Stein & Zwass, 1995). However, a knowledge repository cannot provide needed knowledge to inexperienced workers unless they use it (an activity sometimes referred to as knowledge sourcing (Gray & Meister, 2004)). Prior research suggests that inexperienced people may not use a KR without intervention.…”

Organizational Climate and Perceived Manager Effectiveness: Influencing Perceived Usefulness of Knowledge Sharing Mechanisms

“…Individual propensity to learn: Borrowing from the educational psychology literature, Gray and Meister (2004) introduced the concept of individual propensity to learn into the knowledge sharing literature. They found that individuals with a strong learning orientation have strong beliefs that their ability can be improved through constant learning and adaptation.…”

Cross-Functional “Coopetition”: The Simultaneous Role of Cooperation and Competition Within Firms

“…cholars in marketing and strategic management argue that knowledge transfer across functional boundaries is critical for numerous outcomes, including new product success (e.g., Griffin and Hauser 1992), organizational learning (Huber 1991), and overall firm performance (e.g., Gray and Meister 2004). In the marketing literature, Menon and Varadarajan (1992) argue that a firm's market knowledge must be transferred or disseminated across departments before knowledge can play a critical role as a strategic asset.…”