thesis_Daniela Noethen_print final - Jacobs University

Multilevel Investigation of Antecedents of Knowledge Sharing and Seeking in Teams
disagree” to “strongly agree”. In the process of translating and adapting the scales to the
context of the present study, one of the items for intrinsic motivation had to be dropped.
Cronbach’s alpha for intrinsic motivation from the two remaining items was 0.66 and for
extrinsic motivation, based on three items, 0.67. For team mean intrinsic motivation,
individual ratings were aggregated to the team level (ICC(1) = 0.08).
Job autonomy was measured with four items developed by Thomson and Prottas (2005).
This scale was chosen with respect to our sample of employees. The items from this scale
describe a reasonable degree of autonomy, for example, “I decide when I take breaks.” Items
were rated on a four-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”,
and Cronbach’s alpha was 0.69. For team mean job autonomy, individual ratings were
aggregated to the team level (ICC(1) = 0.22).
Dependent variables. In accordance with previous measurements of knowledge transfer as a
frequency (Cummings, 2004; Kankanhalli et al., 2005), we measured knowledge sharing and
knowledge seeking with two items each, asking participants how often they had recently
shared or sought a) factual knowledge and b) experience with / from their colleagues within
the team. Ratings were given on a six-point Likert scale ranging from “never” to “very often”.
Cronbach’s alpha for both knowledge sharing and knowledge seeking was 0.86. ICC(1), as a
measure of non-independence (Bliese, 2000), amounted to 0.04 for knowledge sharing and
0.10 for knowledge seeking, showing that the dependent variables were influenced to a certain
degree by group membership, were therefore non-independent and needed to be analyzed by
means of a multilevel approach.
Control variables. To rule out alternative explanations, we included several control
variables in our analyses. Effects of independent variables were controlled for a company
dummy, blue collar versus white collar work, part-time versus full-time employment, years of
job experience in the current position, and a climate supporting innovativeness. The latter was
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