The influence of organizational identification and identity-congruent behaviors on knowledge sharing

This paper advances the perspective that the individuals' willingness to perform extra role behaviors directed at coworkers, like knowledge sharing, is simultaneously influenced by the former's strength of organizational identification and by their evaluation of the strength of identification of the potential recipients of such behaviors. Through an ethnography in a hospital unit where four professional groups operate jointly, we show how highly identified actors appraise the level of identification of the members of different professional groups on the basis of the observations of the extra-role behaviors that colleagues enact. Only when highly identified individuals perceive congruence between the level of identification expected and that displayed by colleagues are they motivated to devote time and effort to share knowledge with them. Moreover, our findings show that knowledge transfer between different professional groups can be interpreted as an unexplored type of organizational citizenship behavior. In fact, knowledge transfer implies the unrequired sharing of operational practices specific to a professional group with members of different professionals groups, which enables these latter to perform, in their turn, extra role behaviors to support the organization. More generally, our study suggests extensions to the model of organizational identification. It also contributes to research on knowledge transfer by highlighting how the processes of organizational identification can promote knowledge flows between heterogeneous groups.