Theoretical Framework of the Effect of Extrinsic Rewards and Individual’s Intrinsic Attributes on Knowledge Sharing Behavior

The existing framework of knowledge sharing from socio-psychological perspective attempts to study the socio-psychological drivers of an individual’s knowledge sharing behavior and relies on social science theories. The objective of this paper is to enhance the existing framework and hence to suggest a comprehensive framework, which will comprehend not only socio-psychological drivers but will also include individual’s intrinsic attributes as well as extrinsic motivators, which act as drivers of his knowledge sharing behavior. By using secondary data, literature survey is conducted, to analyze (1) the role of Organization Citizenship Behavior (OCB) to form an individual’s knowledge sharing intention (2) the role, extrinsic rewards play, in motivating an individual to manifest his knowledge sharing intentions into behavior and (3) how individuals differ on the basis of demographic variables in following their knowledge sharing intention. At the end, a comprehensive theoretical framework of individual’s knowledge sharing behavior is proposed, including six hypotheses derived from the proposed framework. The study will help us to understand the role of an individual’s intrinsic attributes (i.e. OCBs and Demographic variable) and external motivators (i.e. extrinsic rewards) to affect his decision to share his knowledge