Where is the boundary of knowledge sharing? Identifying Knowledge sharing Criteria

Abstract

This paper aims to identifying knowledge sharing criteria. For this purpose, the conditions under which knowledge sharing are likely to occur was studied from employee's viewpoints. The general result from this study is that employees assume privacy (personal intellectual property) for their personal knowledge (scientific knowledge, skills and experience). Therefore, they protect it out of other reach with limits. However, this boundary is variable and its boundaries are variable among different individuals in term of the individual characteristics and cultural, social and organizational conditions. Hence, each of these general factors and its sub-variables can play an essential role in fading out or bolding, Expanding or limiting these boundaries. The criteria for knowledge sharing extracted from the interviews were categorized in 25 categories that are classified in in three categories of nature of knowledge, individual context for knowledge sender and knowledge receiver and context.