Unmasking Barriers to Knowledge Sharing Using a Communication Framework

This proposal outlines the development of a field experiment and survey to investigate barriers to knowledge sharing within an organizational environment. In particular, this study will evaluate knowledge workers’ perceptions regarding the relative importance of different types of barriers to knowledge sharing and investigate a possible relationship between the perceived relative importance of the barriers and the knowledge-sharing context. The purpose of this study is to inform researchers and practitioners so that future research and management efforts can be focused on reducing or eliminating barriers that have the most prohibitive effects on intraorganizational knowledge sharing. A field experiment is proposed where knowledge workers in a large service organization are presented with four hypothetical situations that represent different knowledge sharing contexts. A Q-sort technique is proposed to evaluate the relative impediment that each of the barriers present in that context. The results of the quasi-experiment will be validated by surveying a different set of knowledge workers in the same organization.