Trust and risk as critical factors of knowledge sharing in virtual communities of practice: A conceptual view

Both researchers and practitioners have in the past decade been keenly interested in factors that influence knowledge management practices such as knowledge sharing. Trust has been identified as a major influencing factor especially in virtual communities of practice where there is very little or no face to face contact. At the same time, risk is generally agreed to significantly play a dampening effect on the trust factor. However, research has not resolved the optimal balance of trust and risk when sharing knowledge in virtual communities of practice (VCoP). This is the challenge undertaken by this paper by using secondary study to propose a model that should guide organisations to gauge and predict the level of trust as it affects knowledge sharing in their virtual communities of practice. The model will use well-argued out risk factors as well as trust components such as integrity, expertise and benevolence which has been studied by researchers such as Usoro et al (2007). Both trust and risk levels change with time and experience and thus will be studied in the dynamic perspective. The model should also have policy implications on how to optimize knowledge sharing within the virtual communities of practice given the two conflicting dimensions - trust and risk. In order to answer these problems a mathematical model will be proposed. The model will simulate the behaviour of the participants of a typical VCoP, as well as their trust and risk associated with their actions within a given time scale.