عوامل اکتشاف موثر بر اشتراک دانش - مورد صنعت فن آوری بالای تایوان

In the past, the studies on knowledge sharing tended to be focused on the organization and few paid attention to the departments inside the organization. In this study, valid samples were collected from Taiwan’s 92 IC related firms in the high-tech industry through the Hierarchical Random Sampling method for empirical analysis. The non-linear fuzzy neural network is used due to its capacity in accepting errors and low limitation. This method enables researchers to accurately assess the relations between variables. The result of this study indicated that the degree of formalization and complexity of the organizational structure is negatively and significantly correlated with knowledge sharing. Similarly, motivation through material reward correlates positively and significantly with knowledge sharing with stronger intensity than that between motivation through non-material reward and knowledge sharing. The degree of integration between organizations correlates positively and significantly with knowledge sharing.

As a result of increasing global competition, the issue confronting every business enterprise is to find ways of improving its own competitiveness. Nevertheless, as an enterprise’s organizational structure expands, the respective business units in an organization may not only become competitors of one another internally, but may also be partners if considered from an external perspective. However, an organization unit often learns its lessons from interdependent relationships between itself and other organization units or benefits received as a result of other organization units’ new knowledge. Hence, it is of paramount importance to learn how resources can be integrated and invested and how knowledge can be shared in an organization. Although there have been different studies (Grant, 1996 and Kogut and Zander, 1995) in the past emphasizing the importance of internal coordination in an organization, which had a certain level of influence on the exchange of knowledge, the majority of these studies focused only on a single organization unit. This study attempted to review the interactions between different units within an organization in that competition within an organization is the primary source of unification and sharing of knowledge and power; it is also the cornerstone for expanding knowledge and increasing competitiveness. In theory, although there have been quite a few knowledge-management related studies in the past, most of them focused on the following areas: (1) Building and planning of hardware: mainly focused on researching ways of accomplishing information sharing to provide speedy internal and external communication tools for members of the enterprise, which in turn will enhance the business’s competitiveness (Hedlund, 1994); (2) Software: exploring the details of and process in which knowledge is obtained, created, proliferated and stored from the organizational-behavior and strategic-planning perspectives; mediums for the operation of management policies and culture were also discussed (Grant, 1996 and Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995); (3) Contents: emphasizing the contents of academic knowledge focused by scholars in different academic fields, for instance, IT management researchers would focus on topics such as how information technology can be applied in the learning and transfer of knowledge, while strategic management academics might focus on topics such as how the organization culture, system, core competitiveness and knowledge may be integrated and linked innovatively (Davenport and Prusak, 1998, Kogut and Zander, 1995 and Senge, 1997). Although there have been numerous studies on knowledge management in the past, the focus of these studies was mainly on knowledge creation and sharing (Cross et al., 2001, Hendricks, 1999 and Roth, 2003) as the former is the origin of knowledge and the cornerstone for building up competitiveness while the latter is the proliferation of knowledge and power and one of the ways to increase an enterprise’s competitiveness. Past studies on the topic of knowledge sharing have leaned towards theoretical reviews and classification. For instance, Davenport and Prusak (1998) was of the opinion that knowledge sharing is equivalent to knowledge transfer and sharing amongst members of the organization; Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) further considered that knowledge sharing could be converted via individuals or different mechanisms within an organization. For instance, mutualization, socialization and externalization and combination are considered the different phases of successful knowledge conversion; or the topic of knowledge sharing may be explored from different academic perspectives, for example: Senge (1997) considered knowledge sharing from the perspective of organization learning as effective mechanisms for assisting others to convert knowledge into effective actions. In addition, the levels of difficulties in knowledge sharing among organization units were considered from the perspectives of market costs and transactions. For example: Davenport and Prusak (1998) focused on the process and reasons of knowledge-sharing operations. However, this study focused on studying the interactions between the organization units in an enterprise. Besides, some academics consider that the impetus to knowledge sharing includes not only system and hardware operations but also the design and features of the organizational structure, coordination between organization units, competitive and cooperative relationships between organization units and relational involvement (Foxall and Greenly, 1999 and Gadde and Snehota, 2000). From the human-resource perspective, material and non-Material incentives are not only the motives for employees to work hard, they are also the prime power to facilitate interactions and communications between organizations (Hansen, 1999, Kogut and Zander, 1992 and Tsai, 2002). The primary perspectives selected for this study were initiated by the aforementioned literature overview. In addition, related studies in the past mostly conducted case analysis or used Multivariate Statistical Analysis to authenticate hypotheses derived from theory. This study attempted to use the neural fuzzy set network method to authenticate the theory as this method has the following characteristics: (1) The scope of application is more extensive. The relationship between input and output variables may be non-linear; (2) It is not required to understand the relationships between variables in advance through recurring orders and application of learning; (3) All fixed-quantity and fixed-quality messages are evenly distributed in the network’s neurons. Hence, the level of tolerance for errors and resilience is high; (4) The scope of application is broader than that for traditional statistical approaches. It is more suitable to construct a model for highly non-linear social science behaviors and modes of the like. This is the second motive of this study. On the basis of the above background and motives, the purposes of this study are as follows: 1. Explore the effects of the organizational structure characteristics, interactive relationships between organization units and the methods to encourage knowledge-sharing activities; 2. Utilize the neural fuzzy set network method to authenticate the relevant theoretical hypotheses and present the significance of these results in management as well as make some practical recommendations.

5.1. The meaning of management and practical recommendations On the basis of this study on the high-tech IC industry, the following meanings of management may be drawn: (1) Features of the mechanism for knowledge sharing in the high-tech industry are: personalized, autonomous, knowledge is shared with other departments in a bottom-up approach, the sharing of knowledge may be facilitated through a social or non-formal process, the style of management is similar to organic organization. Therefore, formalization and complexity of the organizational structure is disadvantageous for the facilitation of knowledge-sharing activities. Nevertheless, the decision-making power is still highly centralized. This reflects that the level of business autonomy is not high and that authorities from departmental managers are still required for employees to share knowledge with other departments. (2) As the level of computerization in the high-tech industry is relative higher, coordination and communications between departments may be sped up through the operation of the IT systems; more opportunities for exchanging information and cooperating with other departments are created and this is beneficial for accomplishing departmental goals. However, as the amount of resources owned by different departments vary and the exclusiveness of jobs in departments is different, departments may have different levels of input, which may indirectly lower the willingness of departments to share knowledge and the benefits of knowledge sharing. (3) In comparison to traditional industries, the high-tech industry not only has different technological standards, factors such as the industry structure, knowledge exclusiveness and employees’ work attributes are also different. However, the difference is perhaps not significant if we look at the employee motivation policy. That is, both material and non-material motivation methods are adopted. Taiwan’s IC industry has been flourishing. This is attributable to higher levels of vertical segregation of duties and moreover the profit-sharing policy, which is an important element leading to the industry’s boom. On the basis of the results obtained in this study, it is found that material motivation is still more attractive relative to non-Material motivation. Conclusions drawn in this study differ from those of Hendricks (1999) due to the selection of a different industry and differences in departmental attributes. Irrespective of the differences, material incentives are still the major driving force for employees to work hard. One of the important tasks for the management is to establish a more transparent and public incentive policy. (4) Perhaps the fact that the attributes of work in different departments of the high-tech enterprises differ quite significantly has caused the inconsistency in the impacts of relational involvement on knowledge sharing. However, interactions and cooperative relationships between departments shall be more sedulous given that competition in the industry is becoming fiercer. Finding ways of how to establish a mechanism for interactions and the management style shall be areas that businesses shall actively pursue. (5) Knowledge-sharing activities between departments are perhaps guided or interfered by managers. Alternatively, these activities may also be driven by the increasing necessity that stems from individual employees’ jobs. However, in consideration of the maximization of the overall business benefits, departmental supervisors may carefully consider the options and make a choice between the risk of job confidentiality and benefit maximization for the department.