The impact of awareness, trust and personality on knowledge sharing practice

The awareness of the importance of knowledge sharing to the success and competency of organisation is paramount. Knowledge sharing is unavoidable as it is evident that all organisations require some level of cooperation and contribution of multiple knowledge sources to produce a product or service. The goal of knowledge sharing is simply to increase productivity, innovation and creative output in order to outdistance the competition. This study seeks to investigate the impact of individual factors such as awareness, trust and personality on the quality of knowledge sharing in government agencies in Malaysia. A survey involving 428 samples from three government agencies located in Putrajaya was carried out between August to October 2008. Findings reveal that there is a significant correlation between individual factors and the quality of knowledge sharing. This indicates that organisational knowledge sharing is impacted by the individual factors which comprises of awareness, trust and personality of the people handling knowledge sharing practice.