Is It the Company's or Mine? Perceived Organizational Justice Practices and the Ownership of Job Knowledge

Abstract

This study examined the factors that determine a workers willingness

to share private knowledge gained on the job. The recent vogue in

knowledge management studies typically assumes that workers

naturally are willing to share what they have learned, but economic theory suggests that there should be powerful disincentives to share. We

explored justice practices, individual personality, the psychological

contract, organizational commitment and their relationships to worker

ownership. Results indicated that procedural and distributive justice

had opposite effects on knowledge ownership, while psychological

contract breach and continuance commitment had positive, direct

effects on knowledge ownership.