Organizational Values and Knowledge Sharing Behavior in MNCs

SMG Research Seminar with Dana Minbaeva

We examine how organizational values affect knowledge sharing among individuals in multinational corporations (MNCs). Through content analysis and participant observation in a MNC we identify dialogue and collective efficacy as core values influencing knowledge sharing. We then hypothesize a positive relationship between the internalization of these core values and intra-organizational knowledge sharing. We test the hypothesized relationships on a sample of 219 responses from the employee survey we conducted with multiple respondents from geographically dispersed business units of Dansico. We find a positive relationship between the level of internalization of dialogue and collective efficacy and the degree of individual knowledge-sharing behavior. We also find that, when enacted, the value of dialogue leads to higher knowledge inflows by the individual while the value of collective efficacy leads to higher individual knowledge outflows.