The effect of customer power on enterprise internal knowledge sharing: an empirical study

Yu Wei Chang, Ping Yu Hsu*, Wen Lung Shiau, Ronghua Yi

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal Article peer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how customer power of environmental factors affects customer support (CS) engineers’ personal motivations in a knowledge-sharing context. The authors examine extrinsic (i.e. organizational rewards, reputation, and reciprocity) and intrinsic motivations (i.e. knowledge self-efficacy) affecting knowledge-sharing intentions based on the social exchange theory (SET) and self-efficacy theory. Furthermore, the authors introduce the concept of the social power theory to investigate the moderating effect of customer power on the relationships between personal motivations and knowledge-sharing intentions. Design/methodology/approach – This study collects 349 questionnaires of CS engineers from 16 countries, including the USA, China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. After the data collection, the research model and hypotheses are tested using partial least squares. Findings – The empirical results show that reputation, reciprocity, and knowledge self-efficacy are significantly and positively related to knowledge-sharing intentions. Also, the results show that customer power can significantly moderate the relationships between personal motivations and knowledge-sharing intentions. Research limitations/implications – The findings help multinational corporations employ the perception of customer power to motivate CS engineers to share knowledge. Especially, the results can help organizations increase customer added value through effective knowledge sharing. Originality/value – The research model integrates personal motivations derived from the SET and self-efficacy theory and customer power of environmental factors. Additionally, this study is the first to investigate the moderating effect of customer power on employees’ personal motivations and behavioral intentions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)505-525
Number of pages21
JournalAslib Journal of Information Management
Volume67
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - 21 09 2015
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Keywords

  • Customer power
  • Knowledge sharing
  • Motivation
  • Self-efficacy theory
  • Social exchange theory
  • Social power theory

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