What Drives Knowledge Collaboration? Decomposing Knowledge Contribution Assessment, Finding Antecedents

Knowledge contribution is a positive process in knowledge collaboration. Using what approach to measure the knowledge contribution is critical for improving the efficiency of knowledge collaboration. Based on the studies of knowledge sharing barrier, this paper decomposed knowledge contribution into technological, communication and organization contribution and advocated the peer-assessment for knowledge contribution. Finding antecedents of each contribution is also crucial for accurate and effective knowledge management. Combined with the individual behavior model and IS success model, this paper proposed following antecedents: motivation, perception, ability and personality. Motivation and perception are intentional antecedents, but ability and personality are unintentional. In accordance with a field study of 250 employees, nested into 50 groups, we discover that individual learning motivation and perception of explicit knowledge heterogeneity can promote technological contribution but perception of tacit knowledge heterogeneity has an opposite effect; group motivation of social identity, acquisition ability and agreeableness traits increase communication contribution; group motivation, application ability and agreeableness enhance organization contribution.