Impediments to Knowledge Transfer Behavior of IT Professionals: An Integrative Framework

Technical knowledge transfer within an organization is expected to enhance organizational innovation capability. These activities seem to be influenced by organizational climate, individual knowledge-hiding behaviors, psychological ownership of knowledge, and trust and organizational time pressure. However, few studies examine in an integrated manner, the impact of these factors on the individual’s technical knowledge transfer activities. This study focuses on IT professionals and analyzes this influence using the Theory of Planned Behavior to set the research framework. A questionnaire survey was administered to 399 IT professionals. Based on the results of a structural equation modeling analysis, we show how factors related to knowledge transfer behavior, namely communications and internal and external company rules can enhance a creative climate, reduce the potential of knowledge-hiding behavior and instead, promote knowledge transfer.