1 Barriers to sharing knowledge across Singapore schools: Lessons Learnt from the development of the Educational Taxonomy Portal Naresh Kumar Agarwal (with Danny C. C. Poo and Keat Houng Tan) School of Computing, National University of Singapore naresh@comp.nus.edu.sg Nationality: Indian (Singapore Permanent Resident) Discipline: Information Systems Panel Preference: ICT Adoption and Use in the Pacific Rim Abstract. Knowledge sharing is being facilitated through various tools by removing the barriers to sharing. However, despite the tools, lack of motivation is one of the primary reasons why knowledge-sharing initiatives fail. In this case research, we examine in- depth, the impediments to knowledge sharing across Singapore schools, and the ways to address these. For this, we investigate the reasons behind the reluctance of teachers and students to share educational content in the Educational Taxonomy Portal (ETaP), an e- learning digital repository. The study documents the attempts to get real world feedback on the repository through interviews with teachers and students. It was found that very real human reasons of fear and trust stand in the way of knowledge sharing. An important contribution of this study is a set of impediments concerning schoolteachers and students, and potential solutions to these impediments in the case of ETaP, as well as similar initiatives in the Asian context or other countries that largely follow a collectivistic culture. Based on the interaction with both schoolteachers and students, we present the reasons for transmitter 'hoarding' knowledge and the reasons for the receiver 'rejecting' knowledge. Conducted using Klein and Myers’ 7 principles for interpretive studies, this study sheds light on the level of enthusiasm of schoolteachers towards ICTs/e-learning, attitudes towards mistakes or failures, as well as ways to fight knowledge-sharing hostility. The findings support Husted and Michailova’s model of knowledge sharing hostility and would be useful for similar e-learning knowledge- sharing initiatives. Keywords: Knowledge Sharing Hostilities, Case Study, Singapore Schools, E-Learning, ICTs