Study On Employees’ Knowledge Sharing Behaviors In Weak Ties Networks

With the development of knowledge economy, knowledge has become the key resources of competitive advantage of enterprises. In order to develop and use knowledge more effectively, enterprises are committed to take all kinds of incentive policies to promote knowledge sharing between employees. In recent years, with the enlargement of size and a wide range of resources allocation to become a reality, the operation of enterprises highly depends on coordination and cooperation between different departments. Therefore, the interdepartmental knowledge sharing between staff is quite necessary. The knowledge sharing behavior of employees is not a purely economic exchange process in enterprises, which is also a social exchange process. The Guanxi of employees plays a very important role in knowledge sharing decision-making. Therefore, employees’ Guanxi must be considered when the firm manages knowledge sharing activities. From the perspective of Guanxi, compared with strong longitudinal ties, firms always have weak ties on the transverse departmental contacts, which make driving force of knowledge sharing behavior transform from direct reciprocity to indirect reciprocity, thus reflect different characteristics and evolution laws compared with strong ties. However, although scholars have already studied the relationship between Guanxi and knowledge sharing behavior of employees, they still mainly focus on strong ties, but little attention on knowledge sharing behavior in weak ties network. Therefore, focusing on the characteristics of weak ties, making deep research and analysis on employees’ knowledge sharing behavior has important theoretical significance and practical significance.The theoretical foundation of the paper is indirect reciprocity theory, Employee Guanxi theory and evolutionary game theory. Based on the background of weak ties, the paper tried to make the main factors of knowledge sharing behavior more relativize. According to knowledge sharing behavior characteristics based on different Guanxi, the paper studied the evolutionary process and occurrence mechanism of knowledge sharing behavior. Furthermore, the paper explored the behavior logic behind the employees’ knowledge sharing decision in weak ties, and clarifies the interaction mechanism between corporate incentive methods and employees’ knowledge sharing behavior, which can provide theoretical support and policy recommendations of promoting knowledge sharing in weak ties. According to different knowledge potential of employees, the paper divides the knowledge sharing behavior in weak ties into symmetric and asymmetric, and studies the evolution process respectively according to their different behavior characteristics.Among those researches of knowledge sharing behavior under symmetric state, the paper starts with knowledge sharing behavior of no implementation errors, according to features of weak ties, using indirect reciprocity but not direct reciprocity as values criterion of internal network, using knowledge sharing reputation instead of repeat contact experience of employees as the foundation of cost revenue judgment, using three strategy game which adopts to indirect reciprocity, and setting up an evolutionary game model of knowledge sharing. The paper found that the indirect benefit brought by the reputation of knowledge sharing is the key reason for the occurrence of employees’ knowledge sharing behavior, and the knowledge sharing frequency and net profits of employee knowledge learning are positively related to the knowledge sharing behavior of employees. Thus the paper introduced the interaction effect of irrational implementation errors and incentive methods, studied the influence of error factors and business incentive of employee knowledge sharing behavior, and further analyzed the selection strategy of enterprise incentives. The paper found that error factors have negative effects for employee knowledge sharing behavior; Interaction effect has a crucial effect on the choice of enterprise incentive methods, and enterprises should determine the current incentive selection strategy according to the effectiveness of performance evaluation, crowd-out effect and cost switching ratio of intrinsic motivation.In those researches of knowledge sharing behavior under asymmetric state, the paper reconstructs the meaning of asymmetry knowledge with the view of Guanxi. Based on existing research using value as the only dimension of knowledge, the paper used the probability of knowledge staff as the knowledge sender as another dimension, then made analysis of evolution process of the knowledge sharing behavior according to unidirectional and bidirectional views. The paper found that knowledge sharing behavior of core employees and general employees have different evolution process, so the enterprises should build different incentive policies according to their knowledge potential difference.Finally, based on theoretical analysis, the paper used a multinational company customer support network as case study. On the identification of weak ties, using employees of weak ties as object, with the method of questionnaire survey, the paper discussed relationship between different parameters and employee knowledge sharing behavior, which verified main theoretical results. The paper effectively combined qualitative and quantitative analysis of knowledge sharing behavior in weak ties, and made significant policy recommendations beyond the researches above.