The paper has undertaken field investigation on 370 knowledge workers in knowledge-based industries which are located in Pearl River Delta region by structured questionnaire, and verifies that the different influence of psychological contract and reciprocal preference on knowledge sharing willingness, and further confirms that the reciprocal preference plays an intermediary in the relationship between psychological contract and knowledge sharing willingness. The result of analysis shows that: 1) Transactional psychological contract has a negative effect on knowledge sharing; 2) Relational psychological contract has a significant positive effect on knowledge sharing; 3) Developmental psychological contract only has a significant negative effect on the explicit knowledge sharing; 4) The reciprocal preference plays an intermediary role in the relationship between transactional psychological contract, relational psychological contract.
In the era of knowledge economy, knowledge has been regarded as the most important competitive resource of the organization, and the effective knowledge management has become one of the main ways to obtain the competitive advantage. However, the advantage of knowledge, which must be grasped by the person and share with each other can play and then can be transformed into innovative behavior and innovative products. One study found that knowledge sharing helps to reduce production costs, accelerate new product development speed, improve team performance and the performance of the company [
The concept of psychological contract can be traced back to the understanding of organizational behavior written by Argyris [
Currently the structure theory of psychological contract mainly has two-dimensional structure and three dimensional structure. Two-dimensional structure theory was proposed by Neil Mac which divided psychological contract into two dimensions: transactional and relational; And Rousseau and Tijorimala further pointed out the three dimensional structure of the psychological contract, namely the transactional dimension, the relational dimension and team member dimension. Transactional dimension refers to the organization provide employees with economic and material benefits, correspondingly, the staff also need to assume the corresponding task; relational dimension refers to both the employees and organizations focus on the future, long-term and stable relationship, as a result promote the development of both sides; team member dimension refers to the employees and organizations are concerned about interpersonal support and good interpersonal relationship. Rousseau [
The research of reciprocal preference originated from the field of biology and later it was further developed in the fields of psychology, anthropology, behavioral economics and so on. Trivers Robbert, a biologist, first explained the reciprocal altruism and Matthewz Rabin, an economist, introduced the reciprocal preference into the field of economics, breaking the monopoly position of the rational economic man of the new classical economics; Rabin [
British scholar, Poland, firstly divided the knowledge into explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge and Sternberg [
Psychological contract is a psychological bond to maintain the relationship between employees and organizations, meanwhile the type and state of psychological contract also influence the behavior and attitude of the employees to the organization and others. Psychological contract is the basis of trust in the employment relationship. When employees trust the organization, they will make more contributions to the organization to get more returns. Reciprocal theory thinks that when you become a beneficiary, it will produce a sense of obligation to repay, a kind of psychological pressure, such a kind of psychological cognitive style generally exists in the social culture system. Psychological contract is an implicit contract, a mutually obligation between person and organization, when their needs (material, and inter organizational relationship, interpersonal relation) meet, their altruistic behavior rewarded, the person will be more likely to make Pro organizational behavior, but also to share their knowledge. Atkinson believed that employees’ perception of psychological contract relationship will affect their attitude and behavior towards organization in the future, including knowledge sharing. Previous studies have confirmed that there was a certain relationship between psychological contract and knowledge sharing: Hislop [
H1: Psychological contract has a significant impact on the knowledge sharing willingness.
H1a: Transactional psychological contract has a significant negative impact on explicit knowledge sharing willingness.
H1b: Transactional psychological contract has a significant negative impact on tacit knowledge sharing willingness.
H1c: Relational psychological contract has a significant positive impact on explicit knowledge sharing willingness.
H1d: Relational psychological contract has a significant positive impact on tacit knowledge sharing willingness.
H1e: Developmental psychological contract has a significant positive impact on explicit knowledge sharing willingness.
H1f: Developmental psychological contract has a significant positive impact on tacit knowledge sharing willingness.
According to the social exchange theory, whether an individual is involved in an exchange is considered from two aspects of cost and expected profit. When the income is greater than the cost, the individual will take an active part in the exchange behavior; if the expectation of reward or benefit is greater, the employee will be more inclined to share his knowledge; while the reciprocity preferences can create an atmosphere of trust between the members of an organization, and employees are willing to share their knowledge, because they are convinced that in the future the knowledge receiver can provide help, cooperation and support for them; reciprocal behavior can provide a sense of mutual indebtedness, resulting in knowledge contributors expect o to get help from others in order to ensure continued support for knowledge sharing [
H2: Reciprocal preference has a significant positive effect on knowledge sharing willingness.
H2a: Reciprocal motivation has a significant positive effect on the reciprocal behavior.
H2b: Reciprocal behavior has a significant positive impact on explicit knowledge sharing willingness.
H2c: Reciprocal behavior has a significant positive impact on tacit knowledge sharing willingness.
The longitudinal study of Cooman [
H3: Reciprocal preference plays a mediation role in the relationship between psychological contract and knowledge sharing willingness.
H3a: Reciprocal preference plays a mediation role in the relationship between transactional psychological contract and explicit knowledge sharing willingness.
H3b: Reciprocal preference plays a mediation role in the relationship between relational psychological contract and explicit knowledge sharing willingness.
H3c: Reciprocal preference plays a mediation role in the relationship between developmental psychological contract and explicit knowledge sharing willingness.
H3d: Reciprocal preference plays a mediation role in the relationship between transactional psychological contract and tacit knowledge sharing willingness.
H3e: Reciprocal preference plays a mediation role in the relationship between relational psychological contract and tacit knowledge sharing willingness.
H3f: Reciprocal preference plays a mediation role in the relationship between developmental psychological contract and tacit knowledge sharing willingness.
Based on the above assumptions, the expected model diagram is obtained, as shown in
In this study, a total of 400 questionnaires were distributed in the field and e-mail, the actual recovery of 375 copies, 370 valid questionnaires, the effective recovery of the questionnaire was 92.5%. And the exclusion criterion is that more than 10% of the items were not answered or the items were obviously disorderly answered.
The basic characteristics of the sample are described in
Variable | Category | Number | Percentage |
---|---|---|---|
Sex | Male | 232 | 62.70% |
Female | 138 | 37.30% | |
Age | 18 - 25 | 204 | 55.14% |
25 - 35 | 110 | 29.73% | |
35 - 45 | 52 | 14.05% | |
45 - 60 | 4 | 1.08% | |
Education | High school or technical secondary school | 18 | 4.86% |
Junior College | 63 | 17.03% | |
Undergraduate | 260 | 70.27% | |
Graduate student and above | 29 | 7.84% | |
Department | R & D design department | 81 | 21.89% |
Management personnel | 78 | 21.08% | |
Manufacturing division | 159 | 42.97% | |
Other departments | 52 | 14.05% |
The entire questionnaire was scored by Scale Likert 5 scale, and 1 of them was very inconsistent, and 5 indicated that it was very consistent. Psychological contract test items mainly refer to the staff psychological contract scale developed by the Rousseau [
Based on the Lin [
In this paper, knowledge sharing willingness measurement scale was based on the scale by Bock, including 3 items of explicit knowledge sharing willingness, 3 of which are tacit knowledge sharing willingness.
First of all, according to the data collected by questionnaire survey, have a reliability test for psychological contract, reciprocal preference and knowledge sharing willingness and their dimensions through the software SPSS 19.0.
Cronbach’α was used to test the reliability of each measure scale, as shown in
Use KMO and Bartlett’s test of sphericity to obtain the value of construct validity. If the KMO value is less than 0.5, it is not suitable for factor analysis, and now the KMO value was 0.85, it said that it was suitable for factor analysis, the whole questionnaire validity structure good. Then using confirmatory factor analysis to test the validity of the scale by the software AMOS 22, the results are as shown in
Scale name | Cronbach’α | The number of items |
---|---|---|
Total questionnaire | 0.89 | 26 |
Transactional psychological contract | 0.75 | 3 |
Relational psychological contract | 0.83 | 5 |
Developmental psychological contract | 0.85 | 4 |
Reciprocal motivation | 0.84 | 3 |
Reciprocal behavior | 0.79 | 3 |
Explicit knowledge sharing willingness | 0.85 | 4 |
Tacit knowledge sharing willingness | 0.72 | 4 |
Model | χ2/df | RMSEA | CFI | NFI | IFI | TLI |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Psychological contract | 2.80 | 0.07 | 0.95 | 0.93 | 0.95 | 0.94 |
Reciprocal preference | 2.65 | 0.07 | 0.94 | 0.95 | 0.93 | 0.97 |
Knowledge sharing willingness | 1.68 | 0.04 | 0.93 | 0.94 | 0.94 | 0.95 |
Optimal value tendency | <3 | <0.08 | >0.9 | >0.9 | >0.9 | >0.9 |
As can be seen from
In addition, the study also found that transactional psychological contract has a direct impact on the reciprocal preference, which shows that the level of reciprocal preference of employees with transactional psychological contract is low; relational psychological contract has a significant positive effect on reciprocal benefit, and it shows that the employees of the relational psychological contract are more easily to produce reciprocal preference; relational psychological contract has a significant positive effect on reciprocal benefit, and it shows that the employee of the relational psychological contract are more easily to have the reciprocal preference; the developmental psychological contract has no direct effect on the preference of reciprocal benefit. Finally, this study found that the reciprocal motivation can generate the reciprocal behavior, and then will have a significant positive effect on the explicit knowledge and implicit knowledge sharing. All these support the hypothesis H2a, H2b, H2c.
Variable | M | SD | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1. Transactional | 3.33 | 0.77 | 1.00 | |||||
2. Relational | 3.50 | 0.73 | 0.44** | 1.00 | ||||
3. Developmental | 3.71 | 0.82 | 0.37** | 56** | 1.00 | |||
4. Reciprocal motivation | 3.99 | 0.81 | −0.02 | 0.22** | 0.17** | 1.00 | ||
5. Reciprocal preference | 3.75 | 0.68 | 0.02 | 0.28** | 0.32** | 0.53** | 1.00 | |
6. Explicit knowledge sharing | 3.90 | 0.74 | −0.04 | 0.23** | 0.15** | 0.61** | 0.53** | 1.00 |
7. Tacit knowledge sharing | 3.91 | 0.66 | 0.01 | 0.29** | 0.21** | 0.53** | 0.46** | 0.58** |
Note: ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05.
Path | Relationship between variables | Path coefficient | hypothesis | result |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Transactional Explicit knowledge | −0.21*** | H1a | yes |
2 | Relational Explicit knowledge | 0.35*** | H1c | yes |
3 | Developmental Explicit knowledge | −0.21* | H1e | no |
4 | Transactional Tacit knowledge | −0.21*** | H1b | yes |
5 | Relational Tacit knowledge | 0.33*** | H1d | yes |
6 | Reciprocal motivation Reciprocal behavior | 0.46*** | H2a | yes |
7 | Reciprocal behavior Explicit knowledge | 0.72*** | H2b | yes |
8 | Reciprocal behavior Tacit knowledge | 0.40*** | H2c | yes |
9 | Transactional Reciprocal preference Explicit knowledge | H3a | yes | |
10 | Transactional Reciprocal preference Tacit knowledge | H3d | yes | |
11 | Relational Reciprocal preference Explicit knowledge | H3b | yes | |
12 | Relational Reciprocal preference Tacit knowledge | H3e | yes |
Note: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.
This paper verifies that the type of psychological contract has a significant impact on knowledge sharing willingness from the point of empirical way, and the transactional psychological contract has a significant negative impact on knowledge sharing willingness, which is consistent with the result of He and Li; relational psychological contract has a significant positive effect on the knowledge sharing willingness and the results are consis-
tent with the results of Liza Abdullah Nor; however the developmental psychological contract has a significant negative effect on explicit knowledge sharing willingness, and has no significant effect on tacit knowledge sharing willingness which is inconsistent with the research hypothesis in this paper.
Reciprocal preference has a significant positive impact on knowledge sharing willingness, which is consistent with the conclusions of G. W. Bock and Lee, N. Jitney found that the reciprocal relationship can affect the attitude of employees’ willingness to share knowledge, that is, the stronger the preference is, the more they tend to share their knowledge.
In addition, this study also finds that the reciprocal preference plays a partial mediation role in the relationship between psychological contract and knowledge sharing willingness. On the basis of the above analysis, it is indicated that transactional psychological contract can affect the knowledge sharing willingness through reciprocal preference, and there is a negative correlation between transactional psychological contract and reciprocal preference. That is to say, the employees with transactional psychological contract tend to have lower reciprocal preference, thus reducing their knowledge sharing willingness. Relational psychological contract has a significant positive correlation with reciprocal preference, and the employees with this psychological contract have a high degree of reciprocal motivation and behavior.
Liangtie Dai,Lei Wang, (2016) Psychological Contract, Reciprocal Preference and Knowledge Sharing Willingness. Open Journal of Social Sciences,04,60-69. doi: 10.4236/jss.2016.48008