Research On How Knowledge Worker’s Psychological Contract Affect The Willingness Of Knowledge-sharing

Bacon once said:Knowledge is power. When knowledge-based economy is booming today, it has been generally recognized that knowledge is a source of organizational competitive advantage. The father of modern management Peter Drucker once said,"Knowledge has become one of the most important elements in the enterprise resource elements, other elements must rely on the knowledge to update and equipment." Knowledge creation and application is inseparable from knowledge sharing, knowledge sharing within the organization can achieve the synergistic effect(Musen,1992), create higher value for the organization(Hidding&Shireen,1998). Therefore, managers have been actively looking for ways to promote knowledge-sharing behavior of employees. In practice, many companies spend heavily to introduce high-tech information systems, and still can not really solve the issue of employees "unwilling to share knowledge". Relatively few studies on the willingness to share while academic scholars pay more attention to the process of knowledge-sharing. From the perspective of psychological contract, This study explores how the psychological contract affects knowledge workers’ willingness to share which sample is the core staff in the organization---knowledge workers.On the basis of deep literature review, we found that although the domestic and international research on psychological contract theory is relatively mature, still have not been able to solve the scale of measurement of the psychological contract for knowledge workers required in this paper, and therefore we put forward the assumption of three-dimensional structure of the psychological contract for knowledge workers; At the same time trust is found closely related to psychological contract and knowledge sharing in the literature study. Therefore, based on the introduction of trust in the organization as a mediating variable, we proposed the model that the psychological contract of knowledge workers affects the willingness of knowledge-sharing through trust in the organization. In this study we conducted a questionnaire survey of knowledge workers from24enterprises in Nanchang, Shanghai, Wenzhou etc. and got238valid questionnaires, to validate the hypothesis proposed by the use of mathematical statistical methods such as descriptive statistics, factor analysis, analysis of variance, reliability and validity testing and structural equation test. Through data analysis, this study reached the following conclusions: (1) In our cultural context the psychological contract of knowledge workers has three-dimensional structure which is transactional dimension, relational dimension and developmental dimension. By exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor, this study gets three factors of the psychological contract, named for transaction dimension, relational dimension and development dimension based on its content. Studies have shown that the psychological contract of knowledge workers measuring scale has good reliability and validity, indicating that the three-dimensional division of the psychological contract is a reasonable.(2) The knowledge workers’psychological contract has a significant effect on the knowledge-sharing willingness. In this study, knowledge-sharing willingness is divided into explicit knowledge-sharing willingness and tacit knowledge-sharing willingness, not like in the past a general research on knowledge-sharing or a single study on tacit knowledge-sharing. This allows the organization to clearly understand how the three types psychological contract affect explicit and tacit knowledge-sharing willingness, and tacit knowledge organization is the most valuable, as being the source of innovation. This study shows that:the relational psychological contract has the greatest influence on tacit knowledge-sharing willingness; Transactional psychological contract is negatively related to explicit/tacit knowledge-sharing willingness which is contrary to our motivation theory; Developmental psychological contract is positively related to explicit/tacit knowledge-sharing willingness.(3) The influence of knowledge workers’psychological contract on trust in the organization. Through this study we found firstly not transactional psychological contract, but relational and developmental psychological contract is positively related to organizational trust; Secondly, transactional psychological contract is negative to affect-based trust, while relational and developmental psychological contract is positively related to affect-based trust; Thirdly, transactional psychological contract is negative to cognition-based trust, while relational and developmental psychological contract is positive to cognition-based trust. And results also demonstrated that relational psychological contract in the three types of psychological contract has the greatest influence on trust in the organization。(4)The mechanism of knowledge workers’psychological contract affect the knowledge-sharing willingness. At present, there are many researches about psychological contract, trust and knowledge-sharing, but most focused in the relationship between the two of variables, and there are no relevant system studies of psychological contract-organizational trust---knowledge-sharing willingness, which looks the three variables as a whole. By empirical study, we also found that three types of trust in the organization play not entirely consistent in the model as mediating role:Organizational trust as a mediating variable. Organizational trust is not a mediating variable between transactional psychological contract and knowledge-sharing willingness, but plays a partial mediation role between relational psychological contract and knowledge-sharing willingness, and a full mediation role between developmental psychological contract and knowledge-sharing willingness.Affect-based trust as a mediating variable. Affect-based trust plays as full mediation role between transactional/developmental psychological contract and knowledge-sharing willingness, also fully mediates the psychological contract and the explicit knowledge-sharing willingness, but partly mediates relational psychological contract and the tacit knowledge-sharing willingness.Cognition-based trust as a mediating variable. The results show that cognition-based trust is not a mediating variable between transactional psychological contract and knowledge-sharing willingness, but plays as partial mediation role between relational psychological contract and knowledge-sharing willingness, and plays as full mediation role between developmental psychological contract and knowledge sharing willingness.The conclusions further enriched the theory of knowledge-sharing and have an significance enlightenment to knowledge management practice. At the same time, according to the conclusions we give some advice for business management, finally point out the research limitation and future directions.