A Spanish Knowledge Sharing Instrument Validation

摘要

Knowledge sharing research is growing in Latin America. Most instruments used to measure employees? knowledge sharing activities have been developed in the Anglo?American language (English). Currently there is no instrument available to measure the knowledge?sharing construct in Spanish. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of the research process adopted to design, construct and validate such an instrument in the Spanish language. The validation process was conducted with 228 knowledge workers in Colombia. The instrument has two components. The first part (32 items) evaluates the different ways in which knowledge is shared in an organization. The second part (24 items) evaluates the different tools used in an organization to share knowledge. The validation process is structured in three steps: the construction of the items following a review of the literature; psychometric validation, and the statistical verification of the instrument?s sub?scales. Four categories of types of knowledge and four categories of knowledge sharing techniques are identified. The results of this research contribute to the understanding of a broader perspective of the measurement of knowledge sharing behavior and enable the measurement of this construct in Spanish. Many of the current instruments are very short and do not consider categories of knowledge sharing, neither tools people use to share knowledge. It is expected that the instrument will become a referent to the measurement of knowledge sharing in Spanish speaking countries. It is recommended the translation into English and the validation process of the instrument with an English speaking sample.??.