569 Does Knowledge Sharing Really Increase Knowledge? Hanifah Abdul Hamid a , Nuradli Ridzwan Shah b, Salina Daud c a Center For General Studies Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, 71800 Nilai, Negeri Sembilan Tel : 06-7988437, Fax : 06-7988238 E-mail : hanifah@usim.edu.my b Fakulti of Economics and Muamalat Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, 71800 Nilai, Negeri Sembilan Tel : 06-7988722, Fax : 06-7988238 E-mail : mohdddalins@yahoo.com b Kolej Pengurusan dan Perakaunan Universiti Tenaga Nasional,26700Bandar Muadzam Shah, Pahang Tel : 09-4552020 E-mail : salina@uniten.edu.my ABSTRACT Knowledge is vital resource in the organizations in this era. Knowledge sharing is one of the mechanisms used by organizations to capture, disseminate, transfer and apply knowledge usefully. This study is done to examine if the specific type of knowledge gives significant impact to knowledge sharing practices among business faculty members in the universities. A questionnaire was distributed to respondents and data gathered was analyzed using factoring analysis and logistic regression. Study shows that only explicit knowledge give significant positive impact to the sharing of knowledge among the faculty members. Keywords Knowledge sharing, explicit knowledge 1.0 INTRODUCTION Organizational performance can be improved by providing useful and relevant knowledge to employees (Alavi & Leidner, 2001; Hansen, Nohria, & Tierney, 1999). Knowledge is recognized as the most important resource in organization (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Spender & Grant, 1996). It is considered as the primary source of competitive advantage (Stewart, 1997) and critical to the long term sustainability and success of organization (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995). According to knowledge-based view of the firm, organizations need to have the ability to integrate tacit knowledge embedded in the minds of individuals in order for them to survive and sustain competitive advantage (Barnett & Hansen, 1996; Grant, 1996; Nonaka, 1994) Leadbeater (2000) framed the value of knowledge into four major ways: • extraordinary leverage and increasing returns; • an efficient and effective re-creation of knowledge can represent a substantial source of competitive advantage; • uncertain value - knowledge investment value is often difficult to estimate in terms of future discounted cash flows, and • uncertain value sharing - company may not benefit from knowledge investments because knowledge is embedded in people’s mind Rodgers (2003) found that knowledge must be reconceptualized and quantified as a basis of information related to organization performance. The acknowledgement of knowledge as the key resource of today’s organization affirms the need for processes that facilitate the creation, sharing and leveraging of individual and collective knowledge (Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal, 2001). The key to successfully managing knowledge is now being seen as dependent on the connection between individuals within the organization (Brown & Duguid, 1991). Individuals in organization have always created and shared knowledge. Therefore knowledge sharing has been considered to be a normal function in organization.