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Top1. Introduction
In a highly competitive business environment, organizations are steadily focusing on knowledge sharing (KS) among supply chain (SC) allies (e.g., employees, suppliers, retailers and customers) aiming to excel SC performance to furnish better yields and greater customer satisfaction. KS serves as the fundamental source for organizations where employees participate in knowledge application and innovation (Seetharaman et al., 2019). Several companies have successfully implemented knowledge management practices like Ford, General Electric and Amazon to cater to the needs of different organizational facets. The inter and intra-organizational KS supports SC partners to boost competitive advantage by sharing experiences, frequent operations and innovation practices to resolve strategic and operational issues (An-Shuen Nir, 2012; Cheng et al., 2008; Wang et al., 2008).
The KS process is dependent on the partner’s cooperation and relationships with each other, which closely links with engagement practices. In a corporate environment, engagement refers to employees' emotional connection with job role in organization. However, an encouraging form of engagement practices is voluntary engagement (VE). VE is promising psychological disposition of a volunteer (e.g. employee, partner) that shows itself in cognitive, mental, physical, social and spiritual contributions that occur through collaborative interactions (Conduit et al., 2019). VE can play a crucial role in KS for SC innovation because it can unite SC partners and staff emotionally with the organization, job role and organizational goals (Osterloh & Frey, 2000). Employees with high VE would show high dedication to the company. Subsequently, VE encourages partners to share insights into different work scenarios, innovation practices (Osterloh & Frey, 2000) and better dynamic methods of KS (Teng & Song, 2011).