The role of knowledge sharing on employees' innovation initiatives

Knowledge sharing (KS) is one of the pillars among the factor in knowledge management. There are numerous ways in which knowledge sharing might be beneficial to organizational productivity, competitiveness and innovative initiatives. Dialogue delivery involved during knowledge sharing, often lead
to generation of new ideas, which form the ground for the nurturing of new knowledge. KS helps in marketing effectiveness and enhances organizational innovativeness. The purpose of this research is to investigate the role of employees’ knowledge sharing, and to what extent KS affect their innovative thinking/initiatives. The research will first investigate the general roles knowledge management and knowledge sharing plays on organizational performance and later focus on how the sharing of personal/individual
knowledge affects the employees overall critical thinking and consequently their innovation initiatives and innovation. The research will also discuss the effects on employees’ KS on groups and consequently on the group’s overall innovative ideas. Generally, employees resist sharing what they know as they believe they
would lose competitiveness. Such thinking not only prevents the learning within the group but also affects the employees’ innovation initiatives as we posit is the only way to be more creative is to be exposed to other’s ideas which in most circumstances act as triggers for ideas and innovations generation. We argue that, for innovation to happen, KS is essential key factor in the process. The paper introduced a framework which demonstrates how knowledge sharing takes place in an organization by identifying the factors required for the sharing to take place. In addition, the paper argues that these factors are the drive for and trigger employees’ innovation and consequently increase organizational learning.