Do We Need to be Selfless? The Long-Term Effects of Egoistic and Altruistic Motivation on Organizational Knowledge Sharing

Recent research has explored two main explanations for knowledge contribution in organizations-selfless altruism and egoistic motivation based on expectation of reciprocal favors. However, little empirical research has distinguished the long-term effects driven by two kinds of motivations. In this paper, we distinguished decision-making mechanisms under egoism and altruism respectively. We identified collective benefits of knowledge sharing on dyadic level (knowledge sharing volume and balance of knowledge contribution). Results in this study are quite counterintuitive: compared with selfless motivation, reciprocal behavior in knowledge sharing leads to greater collective benefits. Our findings challenge the long-standing idea that altruism will solve knowledge sharing dilemma automatically.