A multilevel investigation of predictors of sharing and seeking knowledge in teams

This study examines the predictors of knowledge transfer in work groups and investigates the impact of age, motivation, and job autonomy on knowledge sharing and knowledge seeking at the individual and team level.
Using multivariate multilevel modeling, results of a survey study in two German mid-sized companies (N = 571) show that intrinsic motivation is positively related to knowledge sharing and seeking, but extrinsic motivation is only positively related to knowledge seeking. Age has a positive effect on sharing and a negative one on seeking. Job autonomy shows differential effects concerning the level of analysis: it is positively related to knowledge sharing at the individual but not at the team level, whereas there is only a relationship with knowledge seeking at the team and not at the individual level. Given these findings, we argue that researchers must take differences between knowledge sharing and seeking at the individual and team level into account, since aggregated analyses may lead to inaccurate and inconclusive results.