Motivating knowledge sharing through a knowledge management system

Based on both economic and sociological theory, the effects of supervisory control and organizational support on the frequency and effort of individuals in contributing their personally held valuable knowledge to a ‘best practices-lessons learned, repository-based’ knowledge management system were compared. Supervisory control, as expected, had significant impact on frequency, but it also had unexpectedly significant influence on effort. When system variables – usefulness and ease of use – were controlled for, the organizational support measure had little effect on either outcome.