Communication Constraints and Motivations in the Context of Knowledge Sharing: A Systematic Literature Review

Innovation and product development activities in firms in almost all countries rely on the product development teams comprised of across functions. The members of product development team are those coming from various backgrounds, across departments and across areas of science. In many product development projects, team members do not always collaborate as expected due to differences in views and poor communication. This Systematic Literature Review explored what factors are inhibitining and motivate product development teams in their communication to share knowledge. Based on the review of 34 relevant articles, this paper presents five factors which inhibit the team members to communicate (functional diversity, homophily, knowledge hoarding, organizational culture, centralization) and five factors which motivate the team members to communicate (reward system, organizational culture, trust, colocated, technology).