Employee relationship and knowledge sharing: a case study of a Taiwanese finance and securities firm

Received: 26 July 2003 Accepted: 11 December 2003 Abstract Knowledge is a very important resource for preserving valuable heritage, learning new things, solving problems, creating core competences, and initiating new situations for both individual and organizations now and in the future. Knowledge sharing may be a power to encourage knowledge exchange and creation in the organizations in order to recognize their competitive advantages – the brainpower or intellectual capital. In this paper, we propose statistical hypotheses and implement statistical tests in a branch of a Taiwanese finance and securities firm in order to investigate the issue of employee relationship within the case firm, together with the attitudes and intentions toward knowledge sharing with their colleagues. By testing four hypotheses, we find that the relationship between some employees and the case firm is good, and those employees would like to share working knowledge and experience with colleagues voluntarily and unconditionally. On the other hand, the relationship between some employees and the case firm is not probably good, and those employees are reluctant to share working knowledge and experience with colleagues or under some conditional terms. Some research findings propose as managerial issue for discussion and future work. Finally, this paper concludes that the success of knowledge sharing in organizations, depend not only technological means, but is also related to behavioral factors. Knowledge Management Research & Practice (2004) 2, 24–34. doi:10.1057/palgrave.kmrp.8500016