Understanding knowledge management phenomena in virtual communities from a goal-directed approach

作者：Shih‐Wei Chou, Meng-Jun Hsu, Jiun‐Yan Shiau, Ming-Kung Huang, Yi An Chou · 发表于：Internet Research · 年份：2018 · DOI：10.1108/intr-05-2017-0200 · 被引用次数：10 · 研究领域：Knowledge Management and Sharing、Technology Adoption and User Behaviour、Digital Marketing and Social Media

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to understand the formation of knowledge management (KM) decisions, including intention for knowledge contribution and knowledge exploration. The authors build on the goal-directed model and a trust-based lens to develop a belief-trust-decision framework. The authors theorize belief as individual factors (one’s virtual skill) and environmental factors (cooperative norms, familiarity), and trust as emotional trust and cognitive trust. Individual factors represent one’s virtual skill to control knowledge exchange, while environmental factors reflect the level of support/control for this exchange by the context. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a survey method to collect data and partial least squares to analyze them. Findings The authors found that KM decision is affected by two types of trust, directly or indirectly. They are, in turn, influenced by individual factors and environmental factors. Research limitations/implications Generalizability of the findings to virtual communities with different collaboration protocol deserves further investigation. This study contributes to the research on KM and social behavior by providing a comprehensive explanation on KM decision through one’s goal achievement in knowledge exchange behavior, in terms of trust development. Besides, the authors theorize one’s belief on knowledge exchange as skill-control and context-control to represent the drivers for trust. Practical implications The resul...