thesis_Daniela Noethen_print final - Jacobs University

Multilevel Investigation of Antecedents of Knowledge Sharing and Seeking in Teams
more attention to the distinctions a) between sharing and seeking knowledge and b) effects at
the different levels of analysis. Both distinctions are further described in the following.
2.3.1. Differentiation between sharing and seeking knowledge
In communication theory, communication always takes place between a sender and a receiver
(Lasswell, 1948; Shannon & Weaver, 1949; Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson, 1967). In a
similar manner, in knowledge transfer, there is usually a source as well as a recipient (or
seeker) of knowledge (Kankanhalli et al., 2005; Szulanski, 1996; Watson & Hewett, 2006).
With knowledge sharing, we refer to a behavior by which an individual shares knowledge
with another individual, regardless of the form of knowledge, the communication channel
used, or the initiating party of the transfer. Similarly, following Gray and Meister (2004), we
define knowledge seeking as a behavior by which an individual actively accesses another’s
knowledge, regardless of the form of knowledge, or the communication channel. This
distinction between sharing and seeking is not new. For example, van Wijk and colleagues
(2008) demonstrated in their meta-analysis on team and organizational level predictors and
outcomes of knowledge transfer that, depending on the direction of knowledge transfer
investigated, the relationship between different predictors and knowledge transfer differs.
Surprisingly though, studies that actually looked at sharing and seeking in juxtaposition and
compared effects on these behaviors at lower levels of analysis are relatively rare.
Furthermore, the studies that exist sometimes failed to compare influences of predictors on
the two behaviors (Watson & Hewett, 2006). The one study that did compare effects on these
two behaviors (Goodman & Darr, 1998) did not find remarkable differences. In most cases in
the extant literature, nonetheless, researchers have either only focused on knowledge sharing
(Constant et al., 1996; Kankanhalli et al., 2005; Wasko & Faraj, 2005; Quigley et al., 2007;
Reagans & McEvily, 2003), or have looked at knowledge transfer as such, without
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