JMAR Volume Twelve 2000 The Openness of Knowledge Sharing within Organizations: A Comparative Study of the United States and the People’s Republic of China Chee W. Chow San Diego State University F. Johnny Deng Jinglun Electronic Co., Ltd. Joanna L. Ho University of California, Irvine Abstract: This study examines empirically the interaction effects of national culture and contextual factors (nature of the knowledge and the relationship between the knowledge sharer and recipient) on employees’ tendency to share knowledge with co- workers. Quantitative and open-ended responses to two scenarios were collected from 142 managers (104 from the U.S. and 38 from the People’s Republic of China). These two nations were selected due to their divergence on salient aspects of national culture, as well as their global political and economic importance. The focus on interaction effects was aimed at providing a more powerful test of culture’s effects than simple comparisons of means typical of prior related research. Consistent with culture-based expectation, the quantitative results indicated that Chinese vs. U.S. nationals’ openness of knowledge sharing was related to their different degrees of collectivism—the relative emphasis on self vs. collective interests—as well as whether knowledge sharing involved a conflict between self and collective interests. Also consistent with prediction, Chinese relative to U.S. nationals shared knowledge significantly less with a potential recipient who was not a member of their “ingroup.” Content analysis of the open-ended responses further showed that the quantitative results are the aggregated outcomes of trade-offs across cultural attributes and their interactions with contextual factors. Key Words: Knowledge sharing, National culture, Cross-cultural comparison. Data Availability: Data for this study are available from the third author on request. INTRODUCTION In today’s business environment, competitive advantage increasingly requires the open sharing of knowledge by organizational members (Villadsen 1995; Bank 1996; Mullin 1996; Bukowitz and Petrash 1997; Stewart 1997). Indeed, Drucker et al. (1997, 27) have identified harnessing “the intelligence and spirit of people at all levels of an organization to continually build and share knowledge” as a top priority for firms wishing to succeed in today’s competitive environment. A number of companies (e.g., Coca-Cola, Monsanto, and IBM) have established the post of Chief Knowledge Officer, or an equivalent designation, to pursue this objective (Bank 1996, R28). Consistent with the accounting profession’s focus on information collection and dissemination, Ernst & Young and Coopers & Lybrand The authors are indebted to the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their help in revising this paper. Downloaded from http://publications.aaahq.org/jmar/article-pdf/12/1/65/5151/jmar_2000_12_1_65.pdf by guest on 16 February 2023