Antecedents and consequences of knowledge sharing in international tourist hotels

International Journal of Hospitality Management 29 (2010) 42–52

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Antecedents and consequences of knowledge sharing in international tourist hotels Jen-Te Yang * Department of Hotel Management, National Kaohsiung Hospitality College, P.O. Box 608, Kaohsiung City (800), Taiwan, ROC

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Individual attitude Knowledge sharing Leadership Organizational learning Support

The purpose of this empirical study is to investigate factors which influence knowledge sharing, organizational learning and effectiveness. Of self-completed questionnaires collected from international tourist hotels in Taiwan, 615 were usable for data analysis. The structural equation modeling results showed that leaders played the roles of mentor, facilitator and innovator, and nurtured a supportive environment at the levels of workgroup, immediate superior and organization. In addition, employees had a positive attitude towards learning and to sharing. All of these contributions facilitate transformation of collective individual knowledge to organizational knowledge, resulting in the advancement of organizational learning, and thus, greater organizational effectiveness. ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Weathersby (1999) proposes, ‘‘knowledge management is the core of all learning organizations. It creates linkages among employees, customers and suppliers that support both a demand pull and supply push of information (p. 7)’’. This might be why, in the recent development of knowledge management (KM), there has been an increased number of works on human behavior. Nonaka (1988) proposes that human behavior is the key to success or failure of KM strategies, as KM involves an emphasis on climate in the workplace, the promotion of learning and the sharing of skills and knowledge (Bollinger and Smith, 2001). In the service sector, the more familiar context of KM studies is in knowledge-based and information technology-based industries such as finance, management consultancy and marketing (Chase, 1997; Chong et al., 2000; Martin, 2000). One exception is Engstrom et al. (2003), whose research in 13 Radisson SAS chain hotels explored the relationship between evaluation of intellectual capital and organizational effectiveness. From their finding of enhanced business performance through assessing human, structural and customer capital, they call for future research assessing KM in the hotel industry. Yang and his colleagues have recently contributed to KMrelated hospitality research literature. There have been four pieces of empirical research. Yang (2004) indicates that, after collecting job-related knowledge, many interviewees in one hotel would offer feedback on what they had learned and adjust work behavior

* Tel.: +886 935 927 138; fax: +886 7 238 3553. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0278-4319/$ – see front matter ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijhm.2009.05.004

accordingly. In three other hotels, employees’ attitudes to learning were quite passive; they usually waited for instructions. Yang and Wan (2004), examining the aspect of workplace climate, suggest that an organization needs to take steps to foster an organizational culture where knowledge sharing and acquisition are explicitly encapsulated into each job, and to handle situations inhibiting knowledge sharing. Yang’s (2007a) results demonstrate that firstly, facilitating, mentoring and innovating leadership roles were most useful for implementing knowledge sharing and secondly, the supportive environment from the level of an individual’s work group is the most important factor to nurture a conducive climate to knowledge sharing. Another piece of the study (2008) implies that managers have to stimulate and facilitate employees towards the highest level of knowledge sharing, individual and organizational learning. The primary objective of this study is to extend KM in the context of hospitality operating systems. The purpose of this empirical study is to investigate the relationship among latent exogenous constructs of employees’ attitudes to sharing and learning, organizational support and leadership roles, and latent endogenous constructs of knowledge sharing (KS), organizational learning (OL) and effectiveness. 1.1. Significance of this study Authors of KM studies (for example, Dash, 1998; Parlby, 1998; Gupta and Govindarajan, 2000; Olivera, 2000; Storck and Hilll, 2000) have proposed many variables that might influence KS and OL and organizational effectiveness. Some, such as rewards, variables of information technology, leadership and corporate culture, have been empirically examined. However, no previous

J.-T. Yang / International Journal of Hospitality Management 29 (2010) 42–52

studies have attempted a broad integration of all of these in a comprehensive theory of KM. The present study seeks to move in this direction. In addition to this organizational level of analysis, this study integrates individual-level constructs of attitudes to sharing and learning. These are the major contributions of this study. This contribution can not only assist academics to develop a better KM system, but also present insights into how hoteliers can implement KS concepts into practice. 2. Literature review KM as applied to human behavior is now a solid field of research for two reasons. First, as unshared knowledge which exists in an organization will become, as Caddy terms it, orphaned knowledge, this will add to the ‘intellectual liability’ of the company. According to Caddy et al. (2001), ‘‘the focus for orphaned knowledge is on isolation and separation: the separation of this knowledge from other ‘mainstream’ knowledge in the organization (p. 385)’’. Companies have to be aware of the need to attempt to increase control and to better utilize their internal knowledge resources, consisting of existing explicit organizational knowledge such as routines, policies and norms, and individual knowledge which is located in the heads of staff. Difficult though this task is, if this knowledge cannot be better managed by the organization, the ‘missing and hoarded’ knowledge will become orphaned. If staff members possess orphaned knowledge without sharing it, when they are off-duty, transferred to other positions or depart for other companies, this knowledge will be invisibly transformed into knowledge lost. Secondly, in organizations, there is a certain level of overlapping knowledge among members and insufficient use of their individual knowledge. The latter is a so-called ‘‘organizational slack’’. Nohria and Gulati (1995) define it as ‘‘the existence of a ‘pool of resources’ in an organization that is in excess to the minimum necessary to produce a given level of organizational outputs (p. 32)’’. This concept implies that much knowledge which resides in an organization has not been completely applied to organizational advancement. Through OL and KM practices, the overlapping can be refined and enriched; and the orphaned knowledge can be captured and transformed in communities of practice. 2.1. Basic KM concept Most writers define KM slightly differently from each other on the basis of their perspectives and purposes. Some focus on the operational side while others emphasize the conceptual side. Some aim at the mechanistic definition, and others target the humanistic explanation. More comprehensively, Rowley’s definition (2000), which consists of the acquisition, transfer, repository, sharing and creation elements, is ‘‘knowledge management is concerned with the exploitation and development of the knowledge assets of an organization with a view to furthering the organization’s objectives. The knowledge to be managed includes both explicit, documented knowledge, and tacit, subjective knowledge. Management entails all of those processes associated with the identification, sharing and creation of knowledge. This requires systems for the creation and maintenance of knowledge repositories, and to cultivate and facilitate the sharing of knowledge and (p. 11)’’. The further theoretical development and the research design specifically focus on knowledge sharing. Bock and Kim (2002) say that KS is the most imperative process of KM implementation. Sharing knowledge occurs when an individual is willing to assist as well as to learn from others in the development of new capabilities.

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Theoretically Bartol and Srivastava (2002) define KS as the action in which employees organizationally diffuse relevant information, ideas, suggestions and expertise to others. Baum and Ingram (1988), in their extensive investigation of decades (between 1878 and 1988) of empirical research on the sharing practice in Manhattan hotels, conclude that the diffusion of experience from their own and others hotels within the same chain has significant beneficial effect on daily operations. This willingness to share is part of the norms of the hotel industry in Manhattan. Kakabadse et al. (2003) argue that ‘‘KM is not about managing knowledge but about changing entire business cultures and strategies of organizations to ones that value learning and sharing (p. 86)’’. This implies that two determinants of promoting a sharing context are: individual attitudes to sharing and to learning. 2.2. Attitude to sharing Hislop (2003) says that the most imperative factor in practicing KS is the question of employee attitude, not the motivation leading employees to share. From the aspect of an employee’s attitude and behavior, Szulanski (1996), O’Dell and Grayson (1998), and Yang (2008) reveal that people ignore the importance of sharing and transferring knowledge. Also, some individuals possess an ‘unwillingness to share’ attitude, because of their insecure feelings, such as the fear of being impeded from moving up (or lost career opportunities) and the notion of ‘knowledge is power’ (Szulanski, 1996; Hendriks, 1999; Dunford, 2000; Grandori and Kogut, 2002) That is, employees feel fear from the loss of superiority and knowledge ownership after sharing their unique knowledge (Szulanski, 1996; Bartol and Srivastava, 2002). Some others are not interested in sharing (Marshall, 1997). Also, some prefer to work alone. They do not like to learn from others. These preferences are because they believe that they are experts (Trussler, 1998). Still other problems are extra workload, lack of recognition (Sveiby, 2001) and personal acquaintances (Szulanski, 1996). In some cases, employees might not share their bad experiences, failures or mistakes with others (Davenport et al., 1998; Cameron, 2002). This might be because they would fear layoffs, i.e. a job security consideration. Also, sometimes, it is quite difficult for people discovering and sharing their tacit knowledge since some of the knowledge was obtained from painful learning experiences (Tan, 2000). Hypothesis 1a. Employees’ attitude to sharing affects KS. Hypothesis 1b. Employees’ attitude to sharing affects OL. 2.3. Attitude to learning It is not necessary to obtain knowledge and skills from the learning process. Rowley (2000) claims that ‘‘learning is of little value unless appropriated skills and knowledge are acquired throughout the learning process (p. 13)’’. This is because the willingness to learn new things is a prerequisite for the development of OL and KM plans (Sveiby and Simons, 2002; Droege and Hoobler, 2003; Yang, 2008). In addition to this attitude to learning, individuals are able to digest and apply new knowledge to actions. Cohen and Levinthal (1990) define absorptive capacity as ‘‘an ability to recognize the value of new information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends (p. 128)’’. Absorptive capacity is the most crucial determinant to the success of applying past experience to the present at the individual level. A person who has extensive work-related experience in terms of ‘years spent in an industry’ may not possess this absorptive capacity. How does

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J.-T. Yang / International Journal of Hospitality Management 29 (2010) 42–52

the person capture and reflect the underlying rationale and meanings of past experience and then adapt to a new environment? In reality, as Berends et al. (2003) say, ‘‘knowledge has to become tailored to and situated in the practices in which it will be applied (p. 1046)’’. In other words, this extensive experience may not ultimately contribute to the enhancement of organizational performance, even though this person transfers or is willing to share the experience. Szulanski (1996) and Tsai (2001) propose that insufficient level of absorptive capacity is one of the main impediments to knowledge transfer within companies.

knowledge could facilitate new organizational knowledge and hence overall organizational effectiveness. This suggests that a leader should play an innovator role in today’s knowledge era. Innovators are able to detect the external environment and absorb collected information and knowledge rapidly. Their intuitive insights identify future trends and create desired strategies for organizational competitiveness (Cameron and Quinn, 1999). As a result, leaders should play facilitating, mentoring and innovating leadership roles in order to stimulate employees to share, thus to contribute to organizational learning.

Hypothesis 2a. Employees’ attitude to learning affects KS.

Hypothesis 4a. Leadership roles positively affect KS.

Hypothesis 2b. Employees’ attitude to learning affects OL.

Hypothesis 4b. Leadership roles positively affect OL.

2.4. Organizational support

2.6. Knowledge sharing, organizational learning and effectiveness

According to Johnson and Paper (1998), if a company wants to transplant the KM concept into the organization, people have to become knowledge-based persons in the way they behave. A company can apply the concept of organizational support which enables employees to achieve this. Rhoades and Eisenberger (2002) propose that employees’ perceptions of favorable organizational supports include fairness, supervisor support, organizational rewards and healthy job conditions. The last factor could be seen as a kind of business unit support. Yang (2007a) suggests organizations need to nurture employees with skills of collaboration and to develop a working climate encouraging KS and learning activities – i.e. business unit support. Bu¨chel and Raub (2002) say that sharing and leveraging organizational knowledge will not be effective without explicit management support. In addition, Bontis (2003) emphasizes that managerial behavior influences employees’ behavior within an organization. If an occurrence of hoarding knowledge exists in an organization, managers need to start dealing with the problem from the management levels. This is what is known as superior support. Sveiby and Simons (2002) claim the development of information system and technologies would not be successful without individual willingness to share. They reveal that a great deal of the literature shows how the components of ‘‘collaboration’’ and ‘‘trust’’ must be incorporated into the organizational culture for successful KM practices. They identify this culture from the perspective of the three-level organizational support: ‘‘work group support’’, ‘‘immediate supervisor’’ and ‘‘business unit support’’.

Lew Platt, CEO of Hewlett–Packard said (quoted in Caddy et al., 2001), ‘‘If HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times as profitable (p. 387)’’, implying that it is crucial that companies change from the situation where lost knowledge results in intellectual liabilities to that where creating knowledge results in intellectual assets. Many companies have gained great benefits from establishing KM practices. The studies of Parlby (1998), Ahmed et al. (1999), Lim et al. (1999), Lee (2000) and Yang (2007b) reveal that the benefits include minimizing potential losses on intellectual capital from employees leaving, improving job performance by enabling all employees to retrieve knowledge where they need it, potential increase of employee satisfaction by obtaining knowledge from others and gaining from the reward systems, providing better products and services, and making better decisions. Furthermore, this will result in retaining and advancing competitiveness. In addition, another benefit is to eliminate the duplication of knowledge within an organization, to avoid ‘silo operations’.

Hypothesis 3a. Organizational support affects KS. Hypothesis 3b. Organizational support affects OL. 2.5. Leadership roles Leaders’ roles could impede KM practice. The traditional view of management is that all organizational members act as their superiors’ instruments (Roth, 2003). Nowadays, this perspective does not secure future long-term success since stimulating the members to transfer their talent and ongoing experience into organizational asset enables knowledge creation and sustained organizational competitiveness. Therefore, facilitating of leadership roles must receive more attention (Roth, 2003). In addition, Cameron (2002) suggests the technique of mentoring can be applied. Mentoring programs enable senior members to assist juniors. In this context, seniors need to be motivated in order to share their knowledge and experience with juniors and newcomers (von Krogh, 1998; Yang, 2007a). Knowledge is ubiquitous; discovering and hunting this knowledge is one of the challenging jobs in an organization since this

Hypothesis 5. KS contributes to Organizational Effectiveness. Organizational learning builds on individual learning and sharing to enhance organizational capabilities such as the improvement of organizational processes and systems (Jones et al., 2003). Mrinalini and Nath (2000) define OL as a transformation process by which individual knowledge is transferred to organizational knowledge. In other words, people within an organization, by way of sharing their thoughts, beliefs, knowledge and experience, mutually establish their common understandings. The process of effective organizational learning, by way of sharing knowledge among organizational members, enables individuals and organizations to reflect on the consequences of their behaviors and actions, to obtain insights from an environment where they operate, to understand the environment, and hence to interpret the meaning and react to it in more accurate approaches (Jones et al., 2003). An organization provides opportunities for employees to share their new learning and perspectives with others, as the sharing process is the only way to sustain the process of organizational learning. Otherwise, without the ‘sharing’, there is only individual learning, not organizational learning (Yang, 2007b). Hypothesis 6. KS contributes to OL. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) distinguish the concept of OL from KM. They say that, ‘‘organizational learning theories basically lack the view that knowledge development constitutes learning and most OL theories concentrate on individual learning and have not developed a comprehensive view of learning at an organizational level (p. 8)’’. In addition, Loermans (2002) claims the concept of OL and KM has to be intertwined. Without one another, there would not appear to be a synergy effect. This proposition was also tested

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and supported by Yang (2007b). Sharing enables managers to keep the individual learning flowing throughout the company and to integrate it for practical applications, because it results in the enhancement of employees’ capacity. In other words, individual learning does not make KM work; but organizational learning does. The overall effectiveness and contribution to the bottom-line profit, would not be attained unless the ‘organizational learning’ culture is developed (Mayo, 1998; Salopek, 2000). Hypothesis 7. OL contributes to Organizational Effectiveness. 3. Research design 3.1. Research framework The research model (Fig. 1) was developed on the basis of the literature review. Prior research has suggested that four critical elements influence KS implementation: employees’ attitudes to sharing and to learning, leadership roles and organizational support. First, critical elements which affect KS are employees’ attitudes to sharing (e.g. Baum and Ingram, 1988; Armistead and Meakins, 2002; Dixon, 2002; Yang, 2008) and to learning (e.g. Davenport et al., 1998; Cameron, 2002; Roth, 2003; Yang, 2008). Second, leaders in a workgroup play facilitator, mentor and innovator roles in nurturing a healthy work atmosphere for their subordinates (e.g. Hendriks, 1999; McDermott and O’Dell, 2001; Grandori and Kogut, 2002; Yang, 2007a). Third, organizational support should focus on the levels of business unit, immediate superior and work group (e.g. Sveiby and Simons, 2002; Droege and Hoobler, 2003). Last, this sharing enables organizations to gain beneficial OL (e.g. Spinello, 2000; Jones et al., 2003; Hwang, 2003) and organizational effectiveness (e.g. Petrash, 1996; Gupta and Govindarajan, 2000; Olivera, 2000; Storck and Hilll, 2000; Yang, 2007b). Hypothesized relationships are illustrated in Fig. 1. 3.2. Data collection Before the research questionnaire was distributed and completed, content validity had been examined by five employees with

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at least 3-year work experience in the hotel industry, and five academic staff specializing in organizational behavior and/or human resource management. The questionnaire was revised on the basis of their comments. In addition to content validity, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to examine construct validity of the items of the constructs. Diagnostic indices of the CFA show that the measurement model is acceptable; this model fit evaluation is examined in the latter section. The data collection for the study was undertaken between 18 January and 31 March 2006. Of questionnaire surveys, 1500 sets were distributed. Reminder letters were sent to human resource managers, 1 month after the first distribution of the questionnaire. Second reminder letters were sent out 4 weeks later. Of the returned questionnaires, 615 were used for data analysis, and 63 were not fully completed and were treated as unusable. Hair et al. (2006) claim that sets of missing values from the sample size which is less than 10%, would be acceptable for analysis of structural equation modeling. Missing data were dealt with in two ways. First, because some missing data was caused by errors of data entry, all of the missing data cases were re-examined. Second, completed questionnaires were excluded from the data analysis if there was any missing data from a single case. 3.3. Sampling In 2006, the Tourism Bureau in Taiwan classified 2639 legally licensed hotels into three levels: international tourist, tourist and ordinary hotels (www.taiwan.net.tw). With a large number of properties in the hotel industry, the elements of the study needed to be narrowed. With respect to the sampling frame, the focus of this investigation was thus limited to the category of international tourist hotels including 60 properties. Of distributed questionnaires though human resource managers of each hotel, 1500 potential respondents working in international tourist hotels in Taiwan were invited. All levels of employees were invited to participate this study, in order to gather sufficient information from different perspectives and to enhance the statistical efficiency of the sample. The distribution of the questionnaires to participants was planned: 20% of the distributed

Fig. 1. Hypothesized research model.

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J.-T. Yang / International Journal of Hospitality Management 29 (2010) 42–52

questionnaires were from the top management, such as G.M., assistant G.M. and departmental managers/directors. 40% were collected from the middle and lower level, such as sub-departmental managers and supervisors and another 40% from the frontline employees. From the statistical perspective, according to Cooper and Schindler (1998), the validity of a sample needs to be tested; and it is determined by two criteria: accuracy and precision. The involvement of all levels of staff could reduce bias sampling with respect to these criteria. Even though the international tourist hotels, as the study sample, provide much more accessible information than other hotels, the author was still not allowed to contact potential random respondents directly since the HR managers of the participating hotels could not give mailing lists. Therefore, questionnaires were given to the HR managers and then distributed to the potential respondents. However, the HR managers assured the researcher that the respondents would be randomly drawn and the questionnaire would be returned with anonymity. In order to minimize random sampling error, the following procedures of collecting the data were undertaken: first, HR managers of all hotels in the sampling frame were contacted for permission to distribute the questionnaires. Second, all of the questionnaires were sent to HR managers. Third, they passed the questionnaires on to all departmental managers. Fourth, the questionnaires were then randomly distributed to potential respondents. Fifth, the completed questionnaires were returned to the HR department. Sixth, after the collection of the questionnaires from each department, they were sent back to the researcher. Through this procedure, the sample elements were randomly selected and drawn; thus every attempt was made to avoid systematic variance and sampling errors/random fluctuations, which can distort the survey results.

sessions’’, and ‘‘Your superiors show empathy and concern in dealing with subordinates’’. The third section, which investigated the dependent construct of knowledge sharing, was measured by a five-item scale from Sveiby and Simons (2002). A representative of the statements regarding KS is ‘‘Your colleagues ring you from work and ask you job-related knowledge when you are on a dayoff’’, ‘‘Combining the knowledge amongst staff has resulted in many new ideas and solutions for this hotel’’, and ‘‘In this hotel, information sharing has increased your knowledge’’. The dependent constructs of organizational learning and organizational effectiveness were adapted from Cameron and Quinn (1999). A representative of the scales regarding organizational learning are: ‘‘A climate of continuous improvement has been practiced in your hotel’’ and ‘‘Everyone in your department is encouraged to constantly improve and update everything they do’’. The following is representative of the organizational effectiveness items: ‘‘The desired goals of your hotel are always achieved’’ and ‘‘Your loyal customers always come back for further services’’. All of the above measurements are widely employed and have demonstrated validity and reliability. The anchors were ‘1: strongly disagree’ and ‘7: strongly agree’. The seven-point scale facilitates sensitivity of measurement and extraction of variance (Cooper and Schindler, 1998). 3.5. Data analysis In order to explore the simultaneous interrelationship among the above constructs within the hypothesized model, the structural equation modeling analysis was applied by using the LISREL program. Before conducting the SEM and examining its outputs, the following steps were pursued.

3.4. Measures of the constructs The questionnaire was initially written in English. Back translation (Brislin, 1976) was applied to translate the original instrument into the Chinese version. The questionnaire used everyday operational words from the hotel industry and lay terms to explain theoretical concepts, in order to prevent the instruments being an error source. The first section of the questionnaire was the demographic information. Nominal scales used numbers to determine categories. Classifications used in this study included gender, age group, education, length of time spent in the current hotel and the hotel industry, type of current hotel, employment status, and job title in the current hotel. The second section examined employees’ attitudes to sharing and to learning. The statements forming the former construct were adapted from Yang (2004) and from Cameron and Quinn (1999) for the latter construct. Examples of attitude to sharing items are ‘‘When your colleagues come up with a new idea, you are willing to know of and learn about it’’, ‘‘You usually invite your colleagues to provide regular feedback about how they think you are doing on the job’’, and ‘‘When you receive negative feedback, you work on your self-improvement rather than defensiveness or anger’’. The instrument designed by Sveiby and Simons (2002) measured the construct of organizational support. The following is representative of the scale items: ‘‘You help each other to learn the skills you need’’, ‘‘Your immediate superior(s) organizes regular meetings to share information’’, and ‘‘Sharing of knowledge is encouraged by your hotel in action and not only in words’’. This study assessed leadership roles using Quinn and Cameron’s leadership style assessment instrument (Quinn, 1988). Examples of leadership items are: ‘‘Your superiors do problem solving in creative, clever ways’’, ‘‘Your superiors facilitate consensus building in work-group

3.5.1. Prior assessment First, the Q–Q plot of normal probability indicated a relatively normal distribution. Also, the Kolmogorov–Smirnov static with the Lilliefors significance level was greater than 0.05, thus normality is assumed. Secondly, outliers among cases and constructs were excluded from the data set. Thirdly, the scatter plot of the residuals, which was examined, shows there was no clear relationship between the residuals and the predicted dependent constructs scores, and thus linearity could be assumed. The scatter plot of the standardized residuals for the predicted dependent constructs demonstrated a normal distribution of the relationship. Also, the distribution was relatively normal. According to Hair et al. (2006), ‘‘a lack of multivariate normality is particularly troublesome because it substantially inflates the chi-square statistics and creates upward bias in critical values for determining coefficient significance (p. 639)’’. Fourthly, the Cronbach alpha for the individual constructs were higher than 0.7. Construct reliability achieved the level of 0.6 in this study. According to Bagozzi and Phillips (1982) and Fornell and Larcker (1981), it was accepted. In addition to the construct reliability, indicator (i.e. observed variable) reliability, which was greater than 0.5 for each item and 0.7 for an entire construct (Bagozzi and Phillips, 1982; Fornell and Larcker, 1981), was examined on the basis of the standardized loadings result of square multiple correlation (SMC). The Measurement model was assessed with respect to composite reliability (CR) and variance extracted (VE) measures, in order to evaluate loadings for each observed indicator. Fornell and Larcker (1981) suggest the CR values should be greater than 0.6; and standardized VE value should be higher than 0.5.

J.-T. Yang / International Journal of Hospitality Management 29 (2010) 42–52

Fifthly, validity tests were considered. Convergent validity was assessed, according to the result of confirmatory factor analysis, by evaluating factor loadings and squared multiple corrections. If loadings of each item were less than 0.5 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981; Hair et al., 2006) and/or an item had dual loadings which were less than 0.3, the items were excluded from the study. Factor loadings of all constructs in the research model were greater than 0.7. According to the reliability and validity examination, the values were acceptable for further analysis. 3.5.2. Model fit evaluation Prior to proceeding to examine the path coefficients in the structural model, overall model fit needs to be examined. Diagnostic indices, which were evaluated in this study, were: normed chi-square (x2/degree of freedom), goodness of fit index (GFI), adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI) and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) (Hair et al., 2006). These values were compared to their respective common acceptance levels recommended by the previous studies. In order to exceed the adequate level of model fit, the following procedures were conducted. First, research structure and measurement model was developed on the basis of theory. Second, a path diagram graphically indicates causal relationship among constructs with direct arrows, and demonstrates a correlation/covariance between constructs with a curved line. All causal paths and relationships were theoretically justified. Third, the covariance matrix, which was established by using SPSS 11.5, was utilized as an input data for conducting LISREL 8.52. The covariance matrix was selected to examine a structural equation modeling of this study, because the purpose of this study was to test theory and the matrix explains the total variance of constructs. Another explanation is, according to Hair et al. (2006), ‘‘the covariance satisfy the assumptions of the methodology and are the appropriate form of the data for validating causal relationships (p. 636)’’.

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Table 1 Profile of the researched hotels (N = 615). Property

Number of rooms

Number of F&B outlets

Total number of employees

n

Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel

686 336 422 538 209 402 754 856 126 592 388 198 202 315 98 436 288 354 208 243 276 283 220

10 4 9 10 3 6 5 10 2 7 3 4 4 7 5 12 5 5 5 3 3 6 4

687 264 640 812 292 617 578 926 157 523 225 179 278 331 203 745 408 377 227 118 180 234 179

51 15 43 29 16 39 65 36 18 18 15 21 27 36 50 23 21 15 9 11 22 16 17

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W

4. Results 4.1. Descriptive analysis Table 1 demonstrates that 23 hotels actually participated in the study. Table 2 summarizes the demographic information. Of the total 615 respondents, over one-half (56.6%) were female and 43.4% were male. Amongst the respondents there were five discrete categories of age groups, the range of age groups was from 19 to 60 years old, with a greater number from the age range 26–30 and 31–40 (27.3% and 27.6%, respectively). A smaller number of people were aged 51–60 (2.5%). Of the samples, 24.1% had working experience in the industry for 1–3 years, and 22.8% had 5–10 years

Table 2 Profile of the respondents (N = 615). Variables Gender Male Female Age (years old) 19–5 26–30 31–40 41–50 51–60 Tenure in the hospitality industry (years) Below 1 1–3 3–5 5–10 10–15 15–20 More than 20 Organizational hierarchy Top mgnt levela Middle mgnt levelb Rank-and-file levelc

n

%

267 348

43.4 56.6

161 167 170 101 16

26.2 27.3 27.6 16.4 2.5

48 148 120 140 75 47 37

7.8 24.1 19.5 22.8 12.2 1.6 6.0

124 259 232

20.1 42.2 37.7

Variables Types of the hotel City Resort Education PhD/master Bachelor Diploma High school Below high school Tenure in the current hotel (years) Below 1 1–3 3–5 5–10 10–15 15–20 More than 20 Department of the current job Rooms Food & Beverage Others

n

%

438 177

71.2 28.8

18 211 205 167 14

2.9 34.3 33.3 27.2 2.3

128 199 100 106 37 21 22

20.8 32.4 16.3 17.2 6.0 3.7 3.6

270 235 110

43.9 38.2 17.9

a Top-level staff members include Presidents, G.M., resident managers, executive managers, departmental directors/managers, assistant departmental managers and consultants. b Mid-level staff members include duty managers, guest relation managers, outlet managers, supervisors, assistant supervisors, captains, assistant captains, shift leaders and head waiters. c Rank-and-file employees include administrative executives, secretaries, assistants, coordinators, senior bartenders, senior doormen, senior receptionists and any other senior positions, management trainees, waiters, cashiers, receptionists, room attendants and front clerks/officers.

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experience. Having almost one-half (42.5%) of people experienced in the industry for 3–10 years, was seen to provide a great feedback value on the survey questions. Regarding the variable of organizational hierarchy, the ratio of the sample of top, middle and rank-and-file levels was 20:42:38. Overall the demographic data shows, based on the author’s knowledge of the local situation, that the sample reflects fairly well the composition of the workforce in Taiwanese international tourist hotels. The t-test shows that there was no significant difference between males and females on individual attitude to knowledge sharing [t(613) = 0.492, p = 0.623] and on the attitude to learning [t(613) = 0.583, p = 0.56]. This indicates that the population variances for male and female groups were approximately equal, i.e. both male and female respondents perceived the importance of knowledge sharing and were willing to carry out the sharing. Female employees had similar favorable individual attitudes to learning as male employees. In order to investigate the significant differences among the mean ratings for Education Level, Organizational Hierarchical Level and Departments where respondents work, on the constructs of Knowledge-Sharing Attitude and Individual Attitudes to Learning, an ANOVA was performed. Only Organizational Hierarchy was found to be significantly different for Individual Attitude to Sharing [F(2, 612) = 5.419, p = 0.005] and for Attitudes to Learning [F(2, 612) = 10.421, p < 0.05]. Other variables – i.e. Education Level and Departments where respondents work – showed that there was not a statistically significant difference among their groups in how the respondents perceived the importance of sharing and learning. To further investigate the perceived differences between the mean scores for the Organizational Hierarchy group, post-hoc analysis was conducted with Scheffe´ multiple comparison tests, with the result that the sharing attitude of top management staff showed a significant difference from that of the front-line staff (p = 0.005), but there was no statistically significant difference between the sharing attitude of middle management staff and the front-line staff. The Scheffe´ method revealed that employees with a position in the front-line level had less favorable individual attitudes to learning than other groups (p < 0.05). The result also shows that there was no significant difference between the middle level and top level of management staff members (p = 0.087).

also indicates KS and OL significantly contributed to Organizational Effectiveness.

4.2. Reliability and correlation analysis

Fig. 2 shows a strongly significant positive relationship between organizational support, focusing on the levels of work group support, immediate superiors and business units, and the endogenous constructs of KS and OL, by assessing the g coefficients and t values (p < 0.01). This means that, the higher supports an organization nurtures, the greater the outcomes of KS and OL it has.

Cronbach’s alpha was calculated to examine reliability: for the entire questionnaire the alpha value was 0.92. According to Sekaran (1984) and Spector (1992), an appropriate level of internal consistency reliability is greater than 0.7. Cronbach’s alpha values for the individual constructs (see Table 3) were higher than 0.7. The correlation matrix in Table 3 shows that Individual Attitudes to Sharing and to Learning were moderately associated with KS and OL. In addition, Leadership Roles and Organizational Support were highly and positively correlated to KS and OL. Table 3

4.3. Evaluating model fit Diagnostic indices, as previously mentioned, were applied for evaluating overall model fit, before proceeding to examine the path coefficients in the structural model. As for the values of normed chi-square (x2), according to Hair et al. (2006), the chi-square (x2 = 3.16), which exceeded the recommended values (x2 = 3.0), could be acceptable, because of the large sample size in this study. That is, the chi-square is substantially inflated/affected by the sample size – i.e. the larger the sample size is, the higher the x2 values are (Bagozzi and Yi, 1988; Hair et al., 2006). Furthermore, this study used other indices, which are not likely to be affected by the sample size, to examine the overall model fit. The indices (GFI = 0.90; AGFI = 0.87; RMSEA = 0.064; NFI = 0.98; NNFI = 0.99; CFI = 0.99) show an adequate level of overall model fit with the data collection. Standardized path coefficients are illustrated in Fig. 2. 4.4. Attitudes to sharing and learning The linear relationship between the dependent variable of KS and independent variable of individual attitude to sharing and learning was initially explored. Gamma (g) scores of Individual Attitude to Sharing and to Learning with the endogenous construct of KS are 0.33 and 0.26, respectively (p < 0.01). An examination of the t-values indicates that ‘Attitude to Sharing and to Learning’ did not statistically contribute to OL at a significant level. 4.5. Leadership roles An examination of the g coefficients shows that a positive relationship existed between mentor, facilitator and innovator Leadership Roles, and the endogenous constructs of KS and OL (g = 0.37 and 0.61, respectively) at a significant level. This result confirms the finding of the previous study (Cameron, 2002; Roth, 2003) which revealed that leaders need to play mentor and facilitator roles, in order to ensure the success of the sharing culture. 4.6. Organizational support

4.7. The total effect on KS and OL Many of the hypothesized relationships in Fig. 2 were supported, as expected. Employees’ Attitudes to Sharing and to

Table 3 Reliability and correlation (N = 615).

X1 Attitude Sharing X2 Attitude to Learning X3 Org Support X4 Leadership Roles Y1 Knowledge Sharing Y2 Org Learning Y3 Org Effectiveness **

Significant at the 0.01 level.

Items

a

X1

X2

X3

X4

Y1

Y2

4 5 15 6 5 4 6

0.733 0.864 0.897 0.943 0.959 0.895 0.910

1 0.669** 0.494** 0.459** 0.540** 0.376** 0.441**

1 0.568** 0.523** 0.552** 0.455** 0.526**

1 0.823** 0.860** 0.774** 0.822**

1 0.720** 0.642** 0.695**

1 0.659** 0.765**

1 0.822**

J.-T. Yang / International Journal of Hospitality Management 29 (2010) 42–52

Fig. 2. Research structural equation model. Note: t-values for standardized path coefficients are described in parentheses.

Learning, Organizational Support and Leadership Roles had a positive effect on KS at a significant level. These exogenous constructs accounted for 89% of the total variance in KS. Organizational Support (b = 0.68) contributed more to KS than either Leadership Roles (b = 0.37), Attitudes to Sharing (b = 0.33), or Attitudes to Learning (b = 0.26). A significant effect of Organizational Support and Leadership Roles on OL was found. Employees’ Attitudes to Sharing and to Learning were not significantly affected. They explained 88% of variability. 4.8. KS, OL and organizational effectiveness Fig. 2 indicates that KS were significantly correlated to OL and Organizational Effectiveness (p < 0.01). The constructs of KS and OL explained 90% of the total variance in Organizational Effectiveness. The beta (b) coefficients show that OL (b = 0.69) contributed almost twice as strongly as KS (b = 0.32) to Organizational Effectiveness (p < 0.01). This may reflect the idea that OL is a broader and higher level construct than KS, providing more value to organizations. 5. Discussion 5.1. Attitudes to sharing and to learning The literature review indicates that employees’ positive attitudes to sharing and to learning should be associated with high levels of KS and OL (e.g. Baum and Ingram, 1988; O’Dell and Grayson, 1998; Argote and Ingram, 2000; Cameron, 2002; Zollo and Winter, 2002). Supposedly, human behavior is a determinant to success or failure of KS and OL implementation. But in this study, there would not appear to be support for this as a whole. As for the two exogenous constructs in the structure model, the moderate level of prediction of the KS construct might be because people did not necessarily obtain knowledge after the process of sharing and learning was conducted. That is to say, if employees possess negative attitudes, sharees could never retain sharers’ knowledge; after all sharees need to absorb this collected knowledge. And

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**

p < 0.01.

hence the outcomes of KS and OL at the level of an organization as a whole would suffer. This implies that it is crucial to include and nurture individual willingness to share and learn as a part of the organizational norm (like the hotel industry in Manhattan) (Baum and Ingram, 1988). 5.2. Leadership roles The contribution of three types of leadership roles in predicting KS and OL echoes the previous studies. The practices of mentor, facilitator and innovator leadership were highly associated with KS and OL. This result supplements the findings of Roth (2003) and Cameron (2002). Roth emphasized the fact that facilitating and coaching leadership role leads to positive KS practices. Cameron suggests that mentoring and inspiring facilitate the practices. The roles of facilitator and mentor are classified in the human relations model of Quinn’s competing value framework (Quinn, 1988). These two roles are underpinned by the concept of human interaction. Leaders consider the ‘individuals including customers and employees’ as the most important factor and they emphasize affiliation, morale, cohesion and harmony in the workplace. Consequently, in practice, leaders always attend to personal difficulties including their problems and show empathy and concern in handling these situations. In addition, as this human relations model focuses on the ‘internal-flexibility’ dimension, individuals collectively learn from and share with others and as well, organizations promote teamwork, employee involvement and plenitude of support. So, leaders usually stimulate subordinates to be involved in decision-making and establishing consensus in work groups. Another style conducive to KS is that leaders play an innovator role, which is illustrated in the open system model (Quinn, 1988). With respect to the innovator role, leaders handle situations and deal with difficulties in creative methods and always develop innovation for future potential advancement such as a search for new markets, customers and opportunities. In addition, decisions are continuously adjusted as external environment changes; thus, leaders should be flexible and prompt enough and capable of

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J.-T. Yang / International Journal of Hospitality Management 29 (2010) 42–52

developing active and proactive plans to cope with the environment as fast as it changes. 5.3. Organizational support An important part of the theory of KM described in Fig. 2 is the relationship among organizational support, KS and OL. An examination of the g coefficients indicates that organizational support contributed to the overall prediction with the highest degree between the two endogenous constructs. This finding implies that employees have to receive support from three dimensions of the organizational hierarchy: immediate superiors, work groups and the business unit as a whole, and thus result in effective KS and OL practices. The characteristics of this organizational support conducive to KM implementation, according to Sveiby and Simons (2002), would be: fostering trust surrounding the workplace, encouraging KS in action, not only in words, promoting the collection of new knowledge into the organization and the development of innovative insights and ideas for future success, stimulating employees to say what they think, and building open communication channels throughout the organization. 5.4. KS, OL and organizational effectiveness KS and OL were very highly correlated at a significant level. This result supports the previous study (e.g., Spinello, 2000; Loermans, 2002; Hwang, 2003; Yang, 2008). KS enables individual learning to flow through the entire organization and thereby to become OL. KS and Organizational Effectiveness were significantly associated; however, the weak strength of the present result might indicate that some shared knowledge still remained with individual sharees and did not get converted into organizational-level knowledge, or that sharees did not reflect on and refine learning experiences into knowledge. Managers in these hotels might look at developing systems for retaining such knowledge in organizational repositories. Without these, KS will not contribute fully to organizational effectiveness: experiences or knowledge might be transferred to other individuals by various means, and some team members might use transferred knowledge in routines, but this will not be retained in ways that transcend employee turnover leadership and ownership change. As Wagner (2003) puts it, ‘‘organizations learn haphazardly from experience and rarely capture it in ways that can be transformed into available knowledge embedded in the organizational memory (p. 98)’’. Thus, the present result highlights the need for more integration of shared knowledge into organizational assets or capability. Beyond creation of such assets lies a further need to appropriately use individual values, beliefs and absorptive ability to determine the future usefulness and value of organizational knowledge (Davenport and Prusak, 2000; Senge et al., 2002). This step goes beyond the scope of this study. The most important components of the theory in Fig. 2 are the relationships of key KS constructs to organizational effectiveness: the KS concept is fatally flawed if it does not contribute to business outcomes. Although objective measurement of business outcomes by researchers is difficult, a common and practical alternative is to assess employees’ perceptions of organization-level effectiveness in different organizations or units and to relate that to predictor variables. These results provide important empirical contributions to the literature. Many authors (e.g., Caddy et al., 2001; McDermott and O’Dell, 2001; Li and Gao, 2003) have hypothesized a relationship between KS and Organizational Effectiveness. Similarly, many have predicted that OL will affect Organizational Effectiveness (e.g., Petrash, 1996; Gupta and Govindarajan, 2000; Olivera, 2000). However, previous studies do not offer much

empirical evidence for these links. The present study involves a large sample, a comprehensive definition of key constructs and a systematic attempt to measure these. While this study examined hotels in Taiwan, it provides an important confirmation of the general relationship between these three variables. 6. Conclusions and implications The study clearly concludes that employees’ attitudes to learning and to sharing were correlated with knowledge sharing, but the explanatory power of the equation was not so great. These two attitudes were not statistically significant to predict organizational learning. This is likely to be due to lack of individual absorptive ability. The individual attitude, which was a critical issue, might cause ineffectiveness of the implementation of knowledge sharing and organizational learning. Preset activities such as social activities and training sessions might focus on strengthening relationship and fellowship amongst employees and cultivating mutual understanding. This enables the employees to feel more free and open in discussing job-related matters during working hours. How managerial staff members stimulate and facilitate their colleagues and subordinates to share useful information with each other, is important. As companies nurture this kind of supporting workplace, it would benefit the companies. This supporting climate ensures that the sharing becomes the employees’ habituated interactions while they are on duty. In this scenario, leaders in an organization should be encouraged to play facilitator, mentor and innovator roles. Organizational support is one of the key components influencing organizational implementation to succeed in the long run. The work group support which fosters a sharing culture is the greatest explanatory power to account for the organizational support construct. Fostering the ‘enabling’ environment in a workplace for employees carrying out KS and OL is the most important task. The KS culture can be described as the working climate in which staff members feel the sharing of their thought and ideas is natural and the right thing to do and in which there is trust and collaboration. The ‘enabling’ components, which significantly influenced KS, are top management commitment and support, trust amongst co-workers, immediate managerial involvement and participation in KS practices, the encouragement of creative ideas and innovative insights and open communication channels throughout an organization. This empirical study has found significant relationship among an individual level of attitudes to learning and to sharing, along with leadership roles and organizational support, and an organizational level of KS, OL and organizational effectiveness. It is now possible to propose a more complete explanation as to how KS and OL contribute to organizational effectiveness through the input of individual and organizational levels of these factors. 6.1. Implications for management As information is dispersed and ubiquitous, in order to prevent occurrences of knowledge depreciation, orphaned knowledge and organizational slack, and to enrich organizational competitiveness, it is necessary to acquire information and knowledge from both internal and external sources and to share this knowledge throughout an entire organization. In addition, it would be effective if all employees were involved in these collecting and sharing activities. This implies that, as top management staff members perceive the importance of sharing knowledge, the level of manpower needs to be re-examined, in order to provide sufficient time for sharing and collecting information and knowledge. Nowadays, due to the development of profit centers in many organizations, there might be intra-departmental competitions.

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This might create a hostile rather than a collaborative climate. This causes difficulties of KS and collective learning among departments. Moreover, as employees come and go and leadership changes from time to time, their knowledge might dissipate. How to retain this potential lost knowledge in an organization seems crucial and challenging. As aforementioned in the literature review, Tsai’s ‘coopetition’ concept (2001) can be applied to minimize the negative effect of intra-departmental competitions. Perhaps, social activities and interactive discussions and workshops for employees from cross-departments could be organized more frequently than in previous practice. 6.2. Implications for human resource managers In order to accelerate the implementation of knowledge sharing, acquiring and storing, the emergence of linking KM and human resources (HR) management is crucial. This is because effective KS practices, and the nurturing of trust and collaborative climate in a workplace, need to take human factors into account. After individuals are hired, they should become one component of organizational resources. However, how many HR managers attempt to explore employees’ competencies, and to stimulate employees to share what they know and have learnt? Normally, they just try to train employees in the company’s skills. By the end of the day, when employees leave the job, they take away their knowledge and what they have learnt from the employment. This is an occurrence of knowledge depreciation or forgetting. Minimizing the level of this organizational loss has the same importance as enhancing individual learning capacity to deal with routines. In the knowledge era, a HR manager plays an agent role, whose functions are to attempt to transfer individual knowledge to organizational knowledge and to orient individual’s goals towards organizational goals. The effects of these transformations eventually should contribute to organization effectiveness and growth. Specifically, as HR managers are professional and practitioners, they play three important roles. 6.3. Recommendations for hotel managers As the business environment in the hotel industry is characterized by competitiveness, diversity and variety, the development of knowledge sharing needs a multi-faceted approach rather than a ‘one-size-fits-all’ view. This approach would include encouragement of more positive individual attitudes to sharing and learning, an emphasis on organizational support, and attention to mentor, facilitator and innovator leadership roles. This study also suggests that it could be helpful if top management put more effort into sharing knowledge for the creation of future competitive advantage. This may include: the enrichment of employees’ competences from stakeholders, the improvement of transfer of individuals’ competences amongst staff, and the advancement of employees’ competences from organizational knowledge. Practically this means: building up good relationships between people inside and outside companies (e.g. learning from customer feedback, and understanding what stakeholders’ needs and wants are); building up openness, developing a flexible and sharing working climate (e.g. promoting team/social activities); and organizing job rotations. A mentoring system should be given strong attention, with leaders especially given support to develop their roles as mentors. In this context, seniors need to be motivated in order to share their knowledge and experience with juniors and newcomers. 7. Limitations of the study This study has necessarily involved a number of compromises which result in limitations. First, achieving a satisfactory survey

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