Knowledge sharing mechanisms in industrial research

Past research has firmly established the importance of knowledge sharing in R&D settings. However, current theories provide limited, biased, unsystematic and conflicting perspectives on the origination of knowledge sharing and are thus of limited guidance for knowledge management practices in R&D. To integrate and extend these fragmented insights we undertook two exploratory field studies of knowledge sharing in industrial research organizations. The contributions of this study are the following. First, we introduce three dimensions for differentiating origination mechanisms for knowledge sharing. Second, we show that some of these mechanisms correspond to mechanisms assumed in particular streams of literature, whereas others have so far been neglected. Third, based upon our field studies, we show that each of these knowledge sharing mechanisms has a different value for industrial research practices. Therefore, knowledge management in R&D should facilitate and stimulate a broad portfolio of knowledge sharing mechanisms.