Enhancing the Motivation, Opportunity, and Ability of Knowledge Workers to Participate in Knowledge Exchange

The strategic value of knowledge lies in its effective transfer from those who have it to those who need it through a process of knowledge exchange. Organizations invest significant resources in communities of practice, knowledge repositories, and other initiatives to support knowledge exchange; yet, these initiatives do not always succeed. The purpose of this research-in-progress paper is to present an overarching meta-theoretical framework for organizing and informing research and practice in the domain of interpersonal knowledge exchange. A review of the well-known motivation-opportunity-ability (MOA) model of human behavior is presented together with a description of how it can be used as an organizing framework for extant literature and a prescriptive framework for supporting knowledge exchange. The practical and theoretical utility of this model will be tested at a large U.S energy company where some communities are very successful in their knowledge exchange programs, while others face challenges.