Analysis of Knowledge Sharing Barriers in Sri Lankan Software Companies

Knowledge sharing is a vital factor for the success of organizations, mainly for the knowledge-intensive organizations such as software companies. This study aims to investigate the status of the knowledge sharing attitude and the existing knowledge sharing barriers in Sri Lankan software companies. The Theory of Planned Behaviour is applied as the basis of this study and assessed ten hypothesized associations among dependent variable; attitude for knowledge sharing (AT); and independent variables; motivation and willingness (MW), trust among individuals (TR), time (T), power relationship (PR), expected reciprocity (ER), communication skills (CS), organizational culture and structure (OS), leadership (LD), reward systems (RS), and technological infrastructure (TI). Measurement model analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis were used to analyse the data. The seven factors, which have been identified to have a potentially high significance with knowledge sharing attitude were then considered as the barrier factors, which indicate a high possibility to influence a negative impact on the knowledge-sharing attitude. Meanwhile, acquisition growth was identified to have the highest knowledge-sharing attitude, and the network growth was identified to have the least favourable attitude for knowledge sharing. Findings provide convincing evidence of lack of time, improper organizational structures, PR, language and ER as the main barriers associated with knowledge sharing in software companies. The study suggests some solutions to overcome these barriers and directions for future researchers to conduct their studies.