Organizational Conditions as Catalysts for Successful People-Focused Knowledge Sharing Initiatives: An Empirical Study

This paper analyzes the impact of different organizational enablers on the degree of success of different people-focused knowledge sharing initiatives. Considering company size and technology intensity as two of the most relevant contingent variables in terms of organizational conditions (Mintzberg, 1979), the moderator role of these variables will be examined. For these relationships to be tested, an empirical study has been carried out among Spanish manufacturing firms with more than 50 employees which carry out R&D activities. Structural equation modelling (SEM) based on partial least squares (PLS) has been applied in order to test the main hypotheses of the research. The results obtained show that organizational design and organizational culture play a substantial role when it comes to explaining the degree of success of implementation of people-focused knowledge sharing initiatives. Conversely, the influence of information and communication technologies (ICT) is less relevant. Some interesting differences arise depending on technology intensity and company size.