The strength of weak ties you can trust: The mediating role of trust in effective knowledge transfer

摘要

To investigate whether weaker or stronger ties provide more meaningful knowledge and why. The term receipt of useful knowledge (ROUK) denotes the perceived receipt of information and/or knowledge that has a positive impact on a knowledge seeker's work. The paper models knowledge sharing at the dyadic level by considering structural, relational and knowledge-related characteristics. After a review of the extant literature, the paper postulates the following four hypotheses: 1. H1: Stronger ties more so than weaker ones lead to the ROUK. 2. H2: The link between strong ties and ROUK is mediated by benevolence-based trust and competence-based trust. 3. H3: After controlling for competence and benevolence-based trust, it is weaker ties more so than strong ones that lead to the ROUK. 4. H4: Focusing on an interaction effect of competence-based trust with tacit knowledge shows competence-based trust is more important to the ROUK when that knowledge is tacit than when it is explicit. The paper uses survey information from three companies, and support was found for all the hypotheses except H4. (79 refs.)