SHOULD THEY SHARE OR NOT? AN INVESTIGATION ON THE USE OF COMMUNICATION AND KNOWLEDGE SHARING TECHNOLOGY IN A POLICE ORGANIZATION

Abstract

Organizations are increasingly utilizing knowledge-sharing technologies to increase the amount of knowledge within their organization. While in most organizations, knowledge sharing is seen as a benefit, for law enforcement agencies it is viewed as a necessity. In order to protect against future terrorist attacks like September 11th, law enforcement agencies are trying to increase knowledge sharing across their current organizational boundaries. Given this massive undertaking, we have to wonder what are the potential unintended effects of this increase in knowledge sharing. This dissertation seeks to address this issue by understanding the relationships between individual and organizational factors, the use of knowledge sharing technology, and organizational outcomes.After a general discussion on knowledge, knowledge management strategies and technologies, a two-part model of knowledge sharing is proposed that 1) predicts outcomes given the use of knowledge sharing technology and 2) investigates the individual and organizational factors that serve as antecedents to the use of the knowledge sharing technology.The findings of this research suggest that given the characteristics of a police organization, an increase in the use of the knowledge sharing technology to communicate with external groups results in decreased productivity and job perceptions. Furthermore, this relationship may be moderated by factors within the police organization. Previous research on knowledge sharing has found that as knowledge sharing increases between individuals in different groups, productivity also increases. The results of this dissertation indicate that this is not always the case. By pulling together different areas of research, such as knowledge management, information technology, communication, and organizational behavior, this dissertation addresses the gaps in the research and contributes to the existing understanding of knowledge sharing. This dissertation also provides an important notice to law enforcement and other organizations: although they may approach knowledge sharing with the best intentions, there can be unintentional effects to increasing the use of knowledge sharing technology.