A Model of Product Development Team Knowledge Creation from a
Behavioral Perspective
Xian-guo Zhang 1
1
Business School of Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, China
(zxguo@21cn.com )
Abstract - Team knowledge sharing is a fundamental
way of team knowledge creation. By taking knowledge
sharing behavior as the analysis unit and integrating the
constructs of team psychology safety and shared knowledge,
a comprehensive model of product development team
knowledge creation is constructed from a behavioral
perspective, which is distinct to the exiting models. The
model has the fallowing points: First, the team members’
individual traits, attitude toward, subject norms concerning,
and perceived control of knowledge sharing behavior have
direct effect on his knowledge sharing behaviors. Second,
team psychology safety has positive effect on individual
members’ knowledge sharing behaviors. Three, the tacitness
of knowledge has negative effect on individual’s knowledge
sharing behaviors. Fourth, individual members’ knowledge
sharing behaviors have positive effect on the team
knowledge creation. Fifth, team shared knowledge as a
moderator between individual knowledge sharing and teamlevel knowledge creation can facilitate the transforming of
individual knowledge to team knowledge.
Keywords - Knowledge management, team learning,
shared knowledge, knowledge creation
I. INTRODUCTION
Product development plays an increasing important
role in today’s business competition. From the viewpoint
of knowledge management, product development can be
viewed as a collective knowledge creating activities, and
successful product development needs effective
integration of multiple kinds of special knowledge [1, 2].
Product development team is the subject of product
developing, and it can be taken as a distributed cognitive
system [3, 4]. The literatures on distributed cognition and
knowledge integration both support that knowledge
sharing can create common understanding and fulfill the
integration of knowledge[3-5], so the creation of product
development team knowledge can be studied from
knowledge sharing. The fallowing parts of this paper are
organized as below: the main concepts are firstly defined,
and then the conceptual framework is put forward and the
hypotheses are proposed.
II. METHODOLOGY
A. Definition of Constructs
Knowledge sharing is defined as an social
interactive process which includes behavior motivating,
knowledge transporting, and knowledge understanding
[6]
.Hansen (1999) thinks knowledge sharing is a searching,
distinguishing, moving and incorporating process[7].
Knowledge moving means the sending and receiving of
knowledge, and knowledge incorporating means the
understanding of knowledge. Team knowledge creation
is defined as newly created team-level collective
knowledge basing on the members’ knowledge sharing
behavior activities. According to the theory of group
dynamics [5, 8], team can be viewed as a distributed
cognitive system consisting of more than two members,
basing on its members’ knowledge sharing, team
collective results that beyond individual knowledge
sharing can be created.
B. Conceptual Framework
The factors that have major influences on knowledge
sharing are the participating subjects of knowledge
sharing, the nature of knowledge and the background of
knowledge sharing behaviors [6], so this paper wants to
build the framework on the individual member’s
subjective factors, the nature of knowledge and the team
context. Knowledge sharing is a rational behavior of
knowledge worker, and it is guided by his inner intention.
As the literature has pointed out that knowledge sharing
behavior is depend on the willingness of the knower [9], so
based on the theory of Planed Behavior [10], the model
analyzes the individual’s traits on his knowledge sharing
behavior from attitudes, norms and perceived controlling
of the behavior.
The nature of knowledge should be considered in the
model, because the members must give out his knowledge
before the knowledge sharing behavior, and the tacitness
of knowledge has strong effect on knowledge sharing
behavior [9, 11]. In the context of team, the individual’s
knowledge sharing behavior will be influenced by the
team level factors, which are analyzed from team
psychological safety and shared knowledge in this paper.
Firstly, team knowledge sharing is a kind of team
learning, research on team learning has showed that team
psychology safety has strong effect on knowledge sharing
behavior [12]. Secondly team shared knowledge will
facilitate the mutual understanding among the members
[13]
, but product development team knowledge sharing is
cross specials [1-2], and the shared knowledge among
members coming from different knowledge domains is
always not enough.
III. HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPING
A. Individual’s Attitude toward
Behavior
Knowledge Sharing
One’s attitude toward behavior is his positive or
negative judgment about the behavior. The social
psychology has proved that when the individual’s attitude
is powerful and directly related to the observed behavior,
the attitude can exactly forecast the behavior [10]. If the
members have explicit knowing on the usefulness of
knowledge sharing and can get self-successfulness and
good reputation [14], then he is more likely to give out his
personal knowledge. If the members know that
knowledge sharing can improve his work and is willing to
ask for knowledge from others, the he will be more likely
to send out knowledge-asking for behavior. Relevant
research has reported the positive relationship between
attitude toward knowledge sharing and the behavior [10],
so the below hypothesis can be proposed:
H1: One’s attitude toward knowledge sharing is more
positive, he is more likely to perform knowledge sharing
behavior.
B. Individual’s Subjective Norms on Knowledge Sharing
Behavior
One’s subjective norms are his internalized, related
to particular behavior social norms. Knowledge sharing is
a social interactive behavior, and researches have showed
that reciprocity, altruism, and trust are social norms
facilitating knowledge sharing [9-10, 14]. The altruism norm
is mainly concerned to knowledge provider, one who is
more altruistic he will more likely to perform helping
behaviors. The trust and reciprocity norm are both
concerned to the knowledge provider and receiver. The
provider should trust the receiver’s goodness and ability,
and think the knowledge is useful to others and cannot
damage self-interest [14]. The receiver can trust that the
knowledge is the best and reliable, and can be learned and
used safely. As analyzed above, the below hypothesis can
be proposed:
H2: The norms of reciprocity, altruism, and trust are
more deeply internalized by the individual, and then he is
more likely to perform knowledge sharing behavior.
C. Individual’s Perceived Controlling of Knowledge
Sharing Behavior.
Perceived controlling of behavior is one’s perception
of the difficulty to complete particular behavior.
Knowledge sharing behavior is not costless, for example,
it consumes time and effort [7], which are the direct cost.
At the same time, knowledge sharing behavior may lead
to some negative results, such as the delay of one’s own
work and the misuse of the given out knowledge. So if the
result of the behavior is more difficult to forecast or the
result is thought to be more negative, the individual’s
knowledge sharing behavior will be more difficult to
motivate. And the below hypothesis can be put forward:
H3: The stronger of one’s perceived controlling of
knowledge sharing behavior, the greater possibility for he
to perform the behavior.
D. Team Psychology Safety amd Individual Knowledge
Sharing Behavior
In the social context of team, the members’
knowledge sharing behavior will be influenced by the
social factors within the team. Edmondson (1999) has
found that the learning behaviors in team are facilitated by
the team’s psychology safety [12]. Knowledge sharing in
team is characterized by openly putting forward one’s
opinions or asking for other members, so knowledge
sharing behaviors in team context not only have the direct
cost of behavior and face the social interpersonal risk.
Team psychology safety as a kind of social force has
positive effect on the members’ knowledge sharing
behavior:
H4: Team psychology safety has positive effect on
the individual member’s knowledge sharing behavior.
E. Tacitness of Knowledge and Individual Knowledge
Sharing Behavior
The tacitness of knowledge can have effect on
individual knowledge sharing behavior from several
ways. Firstly, if the knowledge to be shared is the daily
common knowledge, then it is easily neglected and the
individual cannot consciously give it out for sharing [9, 11],
so the knowledge sharing behavior is directly hindered.
Second, if the knowledge is an immature and in-becoming
one, its sharing needs further conscious process [11], and
then the sharing behavior will be difficult to take place.
Last, if the knowledge is the expertise, which needs long
time to learn and cumulate and is the member’s core
ability, so the willing to sharing it is always low [16]. The
above analysis leads to the fallow hypothesis:
H5: The tacitness of knowledge has a negative effect
on individual’s knowledge sharing behavior.
F. Individual Knowledge Sharing Behavior and Team
Knowledge Creation
Knowledge sharing needs the expressing out of one’s
knowledge, which can motivate the knowledge provider’s
reflecting on his knowing and deepens the understanding
of the knowing [11]. As to the knowledge acceptor,
successful knowledge sharing can provide new
knowledge and views to him, which helps the acceptor to
build more comprehensive understanding about his work
and the product [16]. The team should create integrated
new knowledge basing on the mutual understanding
among its members, as the researches on group dynamics
have shown that the members’ interaction are the basis of
group behavior [5]. Okhusen & Eisenhardt (2002) have
pointed out that the essential work of team is to integrate
individual knowledge into collective knowledge, and
knowledge sharing is a fundamental interaction centering
on knowledge exchanging and reusing [5], which can lead
to new knowledge creating. So hypothesizes can be
deduced:
H6: Individual knowledge sharing has a positive
effect on team knowledge creation.
G. The Moderating Effect of Shared Knowledge on Team
Knowledge creation
Shared knowledge is a team level constructs, which
means the overlapping of the members’ knowledge
domain and quantity. Shared knowledge is tacit and can
tacitly facilitate the sharing of knowledge among team
members [16]. According to communication theory, shared
knowledge not only helps members to exactly
understanding the exchanged knowledge, but also leads to
more effective knowledge sharing by selecting relevant
knowledge to exchange, so that the individual knowledge
sharing behavior can be more effectively transformed into
team knowledge [13]. Bechky (2003) has found that shared
knowledge is helpful for the knowledge receiver to
reconstruct and transform the knowledge [15], and the
lacking of shared knowledge has been proved to hinder
team knowledge sharing [16]. So it is can deduced that:
H7: Shared knowledge has a moderating effect on
individual knowledge sharing behavior and team
knowledge creation.
IV. CONCLUSION
This paper believes that the individual knowledge
needs to transform into team knowledge, which means the
integration of team members’ personal knowledge. From
a behavioral perspective, a model of product development
team knowledge creation is developed, which consists of
seven hypotheses and has the fallowing implications.
First, this paper researches team level knowledge
creation in the context of product development team, so
the gap of team level knowledge creation is filled. The
constructed model examines the motivation of knowledge
sharing behavior and knowledge understanding, and
analyzes the sharing behavior and its outcomes, together
with the transforming from individual to team level,
which deepens the theory of knowledge creation.
Second, the creation of team knowledge by integrating
of multiple specialties in product development is studied
from the perspective of knowledge sharing, which
deepens the understanding of the integrating creation of
knowledge and can helpful to the management of product
development. The model shows that product development
team sharing is influenced by the individual member’s
inner belief and intent and the outward team psychology
safety, further more by the tacitness of knowledge and the
team shared knowledge. So in order to fulfill the potential
and dig out the members’ unique knowledge, the manager
should have explicit knowing on the relationship and the
interactive paths among these factors, and chooses
relevant management tools by analyzing the above
variables of his team.
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