Exploring Antecedents of Knowledge Sharing in Team-based Innovation Activities

Innovation becomes norm rather than exception in today`s business, and accordingly firms are working on how to make their employees to work smarter using information systems and technologies. Smart work demands virtual collaboration and cooperation among team members in different places and different time. Sharing of knowledge among team members in these innovative activities are critical in every sense for the successful performance. This study explores the antecedents of knowledge sharing among team members in team-based innovation activities. Five factors (pleasure of knowledge sharing, self-efficacy, management support, rewards, and system usage) are identified through extant review of literature and an instrument is adopted and validated from previous studies. The instrument is adminitered against 138 individuals in and across 54 teams in a telecommunication firm. Except self efficacy, all the paths in the proposed research model is confirmed with different levels of relational coefficients towards the levels of knowledge sharing and innovation activities in teams. Surprisingly, findings indicate that intrinsic pleasure of sharing is most critical than management support, organizational rewards or system usage. This study fills the research gap in team management. Findings provide important implications for managing teams in coming virtual and smart environment.