“They Care, We Share”: Perceived Fairness in Performance Appraisal Systems on Knowledge Sharing

Introduction

Knowledge sharing refers to the exchange of information and knowledge related to work among employees (Yang, 2004). This creation of knowledge pool within a firm helps knowledge intensive industries like information technology (IT) to gain and sustain competitive advantage (Mahnke, 1998; Willem & Scarbrough, 2006; Jha & Pandey, 2016; Jha & Varkkey, 2017) owing to the very nature of knowledge, being valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable (Barney, 1991; Grant, 1991; Wernerfelt, 1984; Nanda, 1996). Knowledge intensive firms like the IT firms employ knowledge workers and leverage upon the knowledge base created within the organization to explore additional business opportunities available (Jha & Pandey, 2016). IT firms function through projects involving individuals having complementary expertise (Davis, 2009), and their success depends upon the sharing of work-related knowledge with project team members (Muller, 2014). Therefore, knowledge intensive industries, especially the IT industry, strive to retain and maintain a rich knowledge pool within the firm to leverage it for the success of their projects. To achieve this, the employees are encouraged to share their work-related knowledge with colleagues. This study is an attempt to understand various factors that go on to motivate Indian IT professionals to share their knowledge in project teams.