Employees' extrinsic motives and knowledge sharing: Intervening role of an intrinsic motive

Abstract

Drives of knowledge sharing in businesses not only arise extrinsically from employees but also intrinsically. Accordingly, this study focuses on examining the effect of employee's organizational identification (intrinsic motive) on the relationship between the organizational climate (extrinsic motive) and employee's knowledge sharing in family businesses in Sri Lanka. Measures of organizational climate, organizational identification, and knowledge sharing were collected by a questionnaire survey of 126 employees working in family businesses. Stratified random sampling technique selected respondents from diverse firms and jobs. While descriptive and correlation analysis elaborated the sample characteristics, the results of the hierarchical regression indicated that extrinsic motivational factors of organizational climate have strong positive relations to employees' knowledge sharing. Additionally, results confirmed that employees' intrinsic motivational factor of organizational identification mediates the relationship between organizational climate and employees' knowledge sharing. Theoretically, this study contributes to linking employees' extrinsic and intrinsic motives of knowledge sharing in family business context to expand the employees' behavioural theories. Practically, managers of family businesses would find new avenues to promote employees' knowledge sharing.