Knowledge Sharing Across Organizations. Determinants, Prerequisites and Limits of Knowledge Sharing Across Organizational Boundaries

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2016 im Fachbereich Führung und Personal - Sonstiges, Note: 1,7, Universität Passau, Veranstaltung: Designing and Refining Organizational Boundaries, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Recently, various studies have identified knowledge as the most valuable resource and key factor in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. However, most organizations do not possess all crucial knowledge within their organizational boundaries and must rely on linkages across them.

Surprisingly, most existing studies focus on knowledge sharing in organizations within their boundaries. In particular, only few papers take into account which factors increase sharing and which factors hinder firms from sharing knowledge across organizational boundaries.

In order to fill this gap, this paper presents a review of the state-of-the-art literature on knowledge sharing across organizational boundaries. This paper will address the following research questions: Which key factors influence the decision whether knowledge is shared across organizational boundaries or not and how are these factors interlinked with each other?

The objective of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of determining factors influencing interorganizational knowledge sharing. The present paper contributes to knowledge sharing discussions by shedding light on which factors have a significant impact on interorganizational knowledge sharing and how these factors are interrelated. Based on the literature I identified eight influential factors of interorganizational knowledge sharing and present a framework for understanding the different impacts among themselves.