The more the better … or is it? The contradictory effects of HR practices on knowledge‐sharing motivation and behaviour

• Date: 01 April 2016
• Author: Anastasia Sergeeva,Tatiana Andreeva
• Published date: 01 April 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12100

The more the better …or is it? The contradictory

effects of HR practices on knowledge-sharing

motivation and behaviour

Tatiana Andreeva∗, Maynooth University, School of Business,

St. Petersburg University GraduateSchool of Management

Anastasia Sergeeva*, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics and

Business Administration

Human Resource Management Journal, Vol26, no 2, 2016, pages 151–171

This article examines how individual-level antecedents such as motivation and ability to share knowledge

mediate the relationship between HR practices and knowledge-sharing behaviour. The results of a survey

of 329 secondary school teachers reveal the contradictory effects of different HR practices on the mediating

roles of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to share knowledge and subsequent knowledge-sharing behaviour

of teachers. The study demonstrates that opportunity-enhancing HR practices act as a moderating condition

that activates either intrinsic or extrinsic motivation to shareknowledge and may completely offset the effect

of motivation-enhancing HR practices. The study makes a distinctive contribution by demonstrating how

certain combinations of HR practices aimed to enhance knowledge sharing might in fact be a costly solution

for organisations, as they activate different mediating mechanisms in the HRM–knowledge-sharing

behaviour link.

Contact: Tatiana Andreeva, School of Business, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Co. Kildare,

Ireland. Email:tatiana.andreeva@nuim.ie

Keywords: knowledge sharing; HR practices; knowledge governance; ability–motivation–

opportunity (AMO) framework; mediation and moderation; intrinsicand extrinsic motivation

INTRODUCTION

Followingtheadvanceoftheknowledge-basedviewofthefirm,knowledgesharinghas

been recognised as an important process contributing to organisational performance

(Grant, 1996; Dixon, 2000; Foss et al., 2010). It spurred the debate among HRM researchers

on how to foster knowledge sharing among employees through HR practices. The link between

HRM and knowledge sharing has been widely explained in the theoretical literature (Jackson

et al., 2006; Foss et al., 2010; Minbaeva, 2013) and addressed in a number of empirical studies

(Foss et al., 2009; Reinholt et al., 2011; Kuvaas et al., 2012; Minbaeva et al., 2012; Swart and Kinnie,

2013). While these studies provide some rich insights into potential HR practices that can be used

to enhance knowledge sharing, some core questions still remain unanswered.

First, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of how these HR practices bring about

organisationaloutcomes and which mediatorsmay intervene in this relationship.HRM research

has been overly focused on distal HR outcomes, leading to gaps in understanding the

mechanisms linkingHR practices to performance (Jiang et al., 2012; Kehoe and Wright,2013).

The knowledgegovernance approach (Foss,2007; Minbaeva et al., 2009)recently suggested that

these mechanisms could be best uncovered through examining individual-level attitudes and

behaviours as critical intermediaries between managerial practices and organisational

* The authors contributedequally to this work.

HUMAN RESOURCEMANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL26, NO 2, 2016 151

©2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.

Pleasecite this article in pressas: Andreeva, T. and Sergeeva,A. (2016) ‘The more the better…or is it? The contradictoryeffects of HR practiceson

knowledge-sharingmotivation and behaviour’.HumanResourceManagement Journal26: 2, 151–171

doi: 10.1111/1748-8583.12100

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performance. Several empirical studies have made progress in addressing this gap (Foss et al.,

2009, 2015; Reinholt et al., 2011; Minbaeva et al., 2012). Still, a recent review of the research on

HRM and knowledge sharing (Minbaeva, 2013) concludes that existing studies provide an

incomplete picture because they focus eitheronsomesingleHRpracticeaimedtopromote

knowledge sharing or on a single individual-level antecedent of this behaviour,and none of them

address both multiple HR practices and multiple individual-level mediators. This is problematic

because in reality employees are exposed simultaneously to multiple bundles of HR practices,

and multiple mediation pathways may exist between them and employee behaviour (Jiang

et al., 2012).

Second, littleresearch has been carried out on the differentiated effects various HR practices

may have on individual attitudes and behaviours and on the potential interactions between

those (Jiang et al., 2012) –both in HRM studies in general and in knowledge-sharing research

in particular. For example, some studies find that providing few opportunities for knowledge

sharing can havea ‘bottleneck’effect (Siemsen et al., 2008; Reinholt et al., 2011), and othersfind

that rewards have no (Liu and Liu, 2011) or a negative impact on knowledge sharing (Bock

et al., 2005). What impact do all these practices have if they are applied together? Does the

effectiveness or failure of one HR practice depend on the availability of others (Kepes and

Delery, 2007; Boxall et al., 2011)? Foss et al. (2015)demonstrate that several HR practices aimed

to enhance intrinsic motivation to share knowledge have a stronger effect on this type of

motivationwhen applied together,but they do not consider how intrinsicmotivation mediates

the further impact of HR practices on behaviour or whether other potential mediators may

intervene in this relationship. If different HR practices activate different individual-level

mediators, what would their total effect on behaviour look like? Summarising these concerns,

Minbaeva et al. (2009) raise the question of whether implementing more practices to support

knowledge sharingis always better for the organisationand call for more research on multiple

HR practices and their interactions with multiple mediators.

This study addresses these gaps by exploring how individual-level antecedents mediatethe

relationship between HR practices and knowledge-sharing behaviour, incorporating both

multiple predictors and mediators, and by examining the differentiated effects these HR

practices have on employee behaviour. Our findings contribute to the knowledge perspective

in HRM research by demonstrating how certain combinations of HR practices aimed to

enhance knowledgesharing might in fact be a costly solution for organisations,as they activate

different mediating mechanisms in the HRM–knowledge-sharing behaviour link.

MEDIATED NATUREOF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE-SHARING HR

PRACTICES AND INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOURS

Prior studies have identified an array of HR practices that impact knowledge-sharing

behaviour, for example, training, job design, employee rotation and monetary bonuses (e.g.

Bock et al., 2005; Cabrera et al., 2006; Jackson et al., 2006; Lin, 2007; Foss et al., 2009; Kuvaas

et al., 2012; Swart and Kinnie, 2013). However, most of them focused either on one of the HR

practices or on individual-level antecedents of knowledge sharing. To build a comprehensive

model that conceptualises multiple elements on both levels of knowledge-sharing antecedents

–that of HR practices and another of individual attributes –we build on the arguments put

forward by Lepaket al. (2006) and Jiang et al. (2012). Integrating a rich body of HRM research,

Lepak et al. (2006) and Jiang et al. (2012) suggest that the multitude of HR practices and

elements of HR systems covered in the literature can be grouped into three main categories,

that is, those enhancing employees abilities, fostering motivation and providing opportunities to

The more thebetter…or is it? Knowledge-sharingHR

152 HUMANRESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL,VOL 26, NO 2, 2016

©2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.