System Dynamics Application to Motivating Tacit Knowledge Sharing Among Knowledge Workers

Managers are always seeking effective policies to encourage employees to share their knowledge with others in an organization. The appropriate organizational incentives are difficult to investigate due to human factors and other institutional complexities affecting sharing behaviors of individuals. Tacit knowledge sharing is most difficult because obstacles stem from aspects such as communication technology, knowledge elicitation and knowledge share culture. This paper, on basis of the extant researches, analyzes major motivators for knowledge sharing and, establishes a system dynamics model to explore the mechanism of knowledge transferring among knowledge workers, taking into consideration the complexity and dynamic nature. At the end of the paper a case study is provided to demonstrate how to use the established model to test the validity of concerned motivation policies. Although the paper focuses on knowledge sharing in an engineering consulting company, the model could be used in a much broader area.