For an organization, the sharing of knowledge among its employees promises many benefits: it allows the organization to build on past experience and knowledge, respond more quickly to problems, develop new ideas and insights, and avoid reinventing the wheel or repeating past mistakes (Cyr and Choo, 2010). For the individual on the other hand, the sharing of knowledge is a more equivocal proposition (Cyr and Choo, 2010). It requires time and effort to share knowledge; and there is often concern about the loss of hard-earned knowledge, and doubt about how the knowledge would be received and put to use by others. It is this tension between organizational intent and individual ambivalence that renders knowledge sharing such a significant challenge in organizations. The dynamics of this tension is played out at the level of the individual, but while much research has examined methods and systems that can facilitate knowledge sharing, there is less research on the factors that may influence an individual’s willingness to share knowledge with others in an organization.

This study explores the nature and influence of the various factors that have been found to act as motivators or inhibitors for knowledge sharing in organizations. One factor of specific interest is interpersonal trust.

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