Wen, B (2022) EXPLORING KNOWLEDGE SHARING AND KNOWLEDGE HIDING OF SKILLED EMPLOYEES IN A SMALL CHINESE MANUFACTURING FAMILY BUSINESS. Doctoral thesis, Liverpool John Moores University.

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Abstract

When it comes to the knowledge management field, knowledge resource, particularly tacit knowledge, is a primary contributing factor to the survival of the small family business. However, a limited amount of knowledge management and family business literature has simultaneously investigated knowledge sharing and hiding behaviours. Self-determination theory (SDT) is an extensively applied theory to probe knowledge sharing behaviour through diverse individual motivations but few in knowledge hiding areas. Therefore, this study explores knowledge sharing and hiding behaviours concurrently in the small Chinese manufacturing family business based on SDT.
This thesis employs an interpretivism philosophy, and data was collected by multi-methods of document analysis and semi-structured interviews from twenty-two participants in a single case-study company. The case study was a typical case of the methodology of the single case-study selection. The success of the selected company depended on the employees’ knowledge innovation, and the local government accredited it as ‘provincially-excellent learning organisation’ due to its training and learning programmes. The participants were selected by the owner-manager and human resource (HR) manager utilising a purposive sampling technique. Data was analysed through template analysis, and three themes arose from the key concepts in the literature, and five sub-themes were sourced from the final template: ‘perceptions of tacit knowledge’, ‘methods of knowledge sharing and hiding’, and ‘reasons for sharing and hiding’.
The findings highlighted that the tacit knowledge of the skilled employees had distinctively experience-based characteristics. This knowledge was often shared through formal and informal approaches, whereas it was hidden through playing-dumb and rationalised methods. The occurrence of knowledge sharing and hiding was mainly driven by diverse corporate characteristics and individual motivations, even if some reasons for both behaviours were the same (intimate rapports) or correlated (trust and distrust; confidence and fears of being replaced by others). The key findings from the data suggested that knowledge hiding was mainly triggered by the unfair issues between the family and non-family employees.
The study makes three valuable theoretical contributions to family business and knowledge management literature. It contributes to extending understanding of the knowledge sharing
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and hiding behaviours in the context of the small family business. This project helps address a gap in the knowledge management literature by investigating a new conceptualisation of the simultaneous enactment of knowledge sharing and hiding in business settings. Through analysing the findings, it has developed a framework to understand knowledge sharing and hiding simultaneously. The study extends an in-depth understanding of knowledge sharing and hiding behaviours simultaneously through exploring different types of motivations and the processes of motivational quality changes and external-regulation internalisation based on SDT. Through analysing the corporate context of the small family business and individual motivations, the findings have the opportunities to influence the decision-makers in the family businesses to become mindful of the significance of using formal and informal approaches for knowledge sharing and to consider using the long-term and short-term methods to motivate people to share knowledge or reduce the possibilities of knowledge hiding.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Knowledge sharing; Knowledge hiding; Small family business; Self-determination theory
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HF Commerce > HF5001 Business
Divisions:	Business & Management (from Sep 19)
SWORD Depositor:	A Symplectic
Date Deposited:	05 Dec 2022 10:36
Last Modified:	05 Dec 2022 10:36
DOI or ID number:	10.24377/LJMU.t.00018218
Supervisors:	Foster, S, Humphreys, D and Abbas, K
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/18218

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