Knowledge Sharability in Cross-Organizational Collaboration: An Exploratory Field Study

Collaborators on cross-disciplinary, cross-organizational teams must decide what knowledge is sharable. The sharability of a set of private knowledge is defined as the degree to which one feels willing to reveal that knowledge to people who are not members of one's own organizational unit. This paper proposes a Value Frequency Model of Knowledge Sharing (VFKS) to explain knowledge sharability and sharing. It reports qualitative findings from an exploratory field study of the degree to which constructs and relationships proposed by the model were consistent with the attitudes, opinions, and reported actions of professional Chief Knowledge Management Officers (CKMO) from 16 organizations in France. CKMO's were consistent with most aspects of the model, suggesting quantitative investigation of the model may be useful. Critical incidents and utterances of the CKMO's did not address two constructs in the model during this study. Further investigation may show whether these effects manifest in other contexts.