ANTECEDENTS OF UNIQUE KNOWLEDGE SHARING: PERSONALITY, TRAIT EMOTIONS AND RISK-TAKING ATTITUDES

Abstract

Unique Knowledge Sharing occurs when individuals contribute knowledge that was originally only held by a small subset of team members. Despite our intuition that teams utilise the informational advantage they have over individuals, this is found to often not be true. Teams focus their attention on common knowledge held by all team members far more than unique knowledge. Previous research on Unique knowledge sharing has mainly focused on its social-situational determinants and largely ignored the role of individual differences. Through this study, we aim to test several hypotheses linking Five Factor Model Dimensions, various trait Emotions and Social Risk-Taking Attitudes to Unique and Common Knowledge Sharing Attitudes. Neuroticism was negatively associated with both types of knowledge sharing, but agreeableness was only positively associated with Common knowledge sharing whilst openness was positively associated with Unique knowledge sharing. We also found that each of the specific emotions studied – Gratitude, Fear, Hubristic Pride and Authentic Pride – had distinct patterns of relationships with common and unique knowledge sharing respectively. Finally, we also found that social risk-taking is unexpectedly involved in both Unique and Common Knowledge Sharing. Our findings make sense of previously mixed findings and illustrate the role of emotions in team processes.