Research typically adopted a social exchange perspective to suggest that employees share their knowledge with coworkers to reciprocate prior positive treatment to return the favor. We challenge this dominant focus on external motivational sources and adopt an identity-based motivational perspective. Our theorizing is grounded in identity theory and recognizes knowledge-sharing identity centrality as an internal source of motivation for knowledge sharing. We also decipher how employees express their knowledge-sharing identity centrality through self-regulatory mechanisms by incorporating key premises from social cognitive theory. Specifically, we argue that knowledge-sharing identity centrality triggers a self-verification process that facilitates knowledge sharing through knowledge-sharing envisioning and knowledge-sharing self-efficacy. We further argue that the positive effects of knowledge-sharing identity centrality are strengthened by employee self-verification striving. We adopted a multistudy design and conducted two studies to understand why, how, and when employees share knowledge. Specifically, in a within-person field experiment (Study 1), we showed that improving knowledge-sharing identity centrality increased an employee’s daily knowledge sharing via knowledge-sharing envisioning and knowledge-sharing self-efficacy. In a between-person field study with time-lagged data (Study 2), we replicated the within-person findings and further demonstrated self-verification striving as a moderator strengthening the effects of knowledge-sharing identity centrality. Our findings advance research on employee knowledge-sharing motivation, unveiling the internal identity-driven motivation processes. We further provide practitioners with an effective knowledge-sharing intervention.

中文翻译：

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从基于身份的动机角度理解知识共享

研究通常采用社会交换的视角，建议员工与同事分享他们的知识，以回报先前的积极待遇以回报同事的青睐。我们挑战这种对外部动机来源的主导关注，并采用基于身份的动机视角。我们的理论建立在身份理论的基础上，并将知识共享身份中心性视为知识共享动机的内部来源。我们还结合社会认知理论的关键前提，解读员工如何通过自我监管机制表达他们的知识共享身份中心性。具体来说，我们认为知识共享身份中心性触发了自我验证过程，通过知识共享设想和知识共享自我效能促进知识共享。我们进一步认为，知识共享身份中心性的积极影响通过员工自我验证的努力得到加强。我们采用了多项研究设计并进行了两项研究，以了解员工分享知识的原因、方式和时间。具体来说，在一项内部现场实验（研究 1）中，我们表明，提高知识共享身份中心性可以通过知识共享设想和知识共享自我效能来增加员工的日常知识共享。在一项具有时滞数据的人与人之间的实地研究（研究 2）中，我们复制了人与人之间的研究结果，并进一步证明了自我验证作为调节者的作用，增强了知识共享身份中心性的影响。我们的研究结果推进了对员工知识共享动机的研究，揭示了内部身份驱动的动机过程。我们进一步为从业者提供有效的知识共享干预措施。