The impact of trust, guanxi orientation and face on the intention of Chinese employees and managers to engage in peer-to-peer tacit and explicit knowledge sharing

Knowledge sharing is recognised as one of the most critical components of knowledge management. Successful and efficient knowledge sharing could directly facilitate knowledge creation and so help a firm to maintain its competitive advantage. Consequently, identifying which factors could encourage or inhibit people to share knowledge is potentially of great value. In this study, we explore the impact of selected socio-cultural factors, viz. trust, guanxi orientation and face, on the intention to share explicit and tacit knowledge in Chinese firms. Two hundred and four employees from Chinese organisations were surveyed on their knowledge-sharing practices. Our findings indicate that while cognition-based trust has no significant effect on the intention to share either tacit or explicit knowledge, affect-based trust has a significant effect on both. Meanwhile, face-gaining behaviours have a positive effect, while face-saving behaviours have a negative effect on the intention to share knowledge. Finally, guanxi orientation also has a strong impact on knowledge sharing. The implications of these findings for organisations and their knowledge management initiatives are discussed. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.