Why People Are Willing to Share More Knowledge than Required

Abstract

Knowledge sharing is critical for modern organizations. Besides in-role knowledge sharing, there exists knowledge sharing beyond one’s role, which is called extra-role knowledge sharing. This study investigates the antecedents of the extra-role knowledge sharing from the perspective of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Previous studies on OCB and works on knowledge sharing were reviewed to develop a model explaining the factors behind extra- role knowledge sharing. Willingness to help that is hypothesized to be influenced by procedural justice, job satisfaction, and employee personality (extraversion and agreeableness) is believed to influence extra- role knowledge sharing. Empirical data confirmed most of the hypotheses of this study