TABLE OF CONTENTS There has been a proliferation of literature on knowledge management with the advent of the knowledge economy (Beck, 1992; Stehr, 1994; Krogh, 2003; Evers and Menkhoff, 2004) as indicated by an increasing body of work in organizational studies, information systems, marketing and the social science disciplines of sociology, psychology, and economics. However, notwithstanding the substantial insights generated about knowledge management issues in contemporary business organizations (Nonaka, 1994; Krogh, 1998; Menkhoff, Chay and Loh, 2004), the development of robust theoretical concepts and models, which could explain why members of organizations do share knowledge, has been slow. It seems that the phenomenon of knowledge sharing, identified as an important component in the management of knowledge workers in organizations, is still something like a black box.
This essay seeks to address this gap by theorizing about knowledge sharing in contemporary organizations based on empirical data collected in a tertiary educational institution in Singapore. The theory we propose in this article is rooted in the concept of social capital, and draws together perspectives from the sociology of organizations, economic sociology, social psychology, and the broad umbrella of organizational studies, which encompass literature such as knowledge management, organizational behaviour, and strategic theory of the firm. The key objective of the essay...
