Do We Need to be Selfless? The Long-Term Effects of Egoistic and Altruistic Motivation on Organizational Knowledge Sharing

摘要

Recent research has explored two main explanations for knowledge contribution in organizations-selfless altruism and egoistic motivation based on expectation of reciprocal favors.However,little empirical research has distinguished the long-term effects driven by two kinds of motivations.In this paper,we distinguished decision-making mechanisms under egoism and altruism respectively.We identified collective benefits of knowledge sharing on dyadic level(knowledge sharing volume and balance of knowledge contribution).Results in this study are quite counterintuitive: compared with selfless motivation,reciprocal behavior in knowledge sharing leads to greater collective benefits.Our findings challenge the long-standing idea that altruism will solve knowledge sharing dilemma automatically.