The effects of knowledge sharing on individual creativity in higher education institution: Socio-Technical view

Abstract

In the era of knowledge-based society, knowledge sharing is attracting a great deal of attention from academics and practitioners because of its multifaceted implications for organizations. Among many aspects of work performance, creativity is apparently one of the most important parts. Nevertheless, the effects of knowledge sharing on individuals are not paid enough attention sufficiently by previous researches. Besides, the higher education is currently is a main issue for both government and academia. However, knowledge sharing researches mainly concerns business organizations rather than public organizations. According to the limitation in the field of knowledge sharing and individual creativity research in higher education institution, this study is aiming to focus on examining the effects of knowledge sharing on individual in a higher institution of education in Korea Thus, objective of this research is set as the development of an integrative model to explain the effects of knowledge sharing on individual creativity. The study draws on both socio-technical view and social capital theory to exploit the important antecedents of knowledge contribution and to examine social and technical facets. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first research about the effects of knowledge sharing on individual creativity. With this new perspective, expect to establish the first research literature of knowledge sharing’s effects on individual creativity that has not yet been explained in previous studies. Moreover, this study set knowledge sharing as a mediator between antecedent factors of knowledge sharing and individual creativity. With this improved approach, the model can explain the mediating effects of knowledge sharing on individual creativity, which contributes to both academics and practices to facilitate individual creativity through knowledge sharing. Third, previous studies on knowledge sharing effects mainly focused on organizational effect...