Tacit knowledge sharing: The role of individual factors

Knowledge has become one of the key strategic assets for the organizations to gain and maintain competitive advantage. There are two main types of the knowledge, which can be found in organizations and individuals: tacit and explicit. Tacit knowledge is Omni present in individual's head while explicit knowledge is a written and documented. The most valuable and remarkable human knowledge exists more implicitly. Sharing and managing this implicit knowledge is considered very difficult, so investigating the factors that may affect knowledge sharing has become a colorful area of research. The focus of this study is to examine the relationship between individual (individual attitude, organizational commitment, and knowledge self-efficacy) and tacit knowledge sharing. The study distributed 650 questionnaires among teaching staff in public higher educational institutes. Out of 650, only 320 questionnaires were returned. Hypotheses for direct relationships were tested using SEM. Results indicated that individual attitude and knowledge self-efficacy were substantially associated with tacit knowledge sharing, however, no relationship was found between organizational commitment and tacit knowledge sharing.