Knowledge Sharing Behavior from Game Theory and Socio-Psychology Perspectives

Many researches have studied the factors that hinder knowledge sharing from technological or organizational perspectives. However, limited research attention has been given to the individual¿s salient beliefs about knowledge sharing. This paper aims to study the role of individual¿s attitude towards knowledge sharing, from a socio-psychological perspective, and how it drives the decision to share knowledge. The paper proposes that an individual¿s knowledge sharing behavior is driven by a set of salient beliefs that are not unlike the notion of payoff in game theory. Using the case of a telecommunication company in Egypt (will be referred to as company X in this paper), the paper employed multi-person game theoretic structure to determine the game played by the employees. The researcher found that the perceived payoff of knowledge sharing can be characterized by a multi-person game and that drivers of individual¿s behavior are self esteem, expected association, expected contribution, self consistency, level of understanding, time to share, and self interest.