Factors Affecting SME Owner-Managers' Willingness to Share Knowledge Online in Rural Local Business Networks

This article integrates typically separate SME research on e-commerce, business networking, and knowledge management into a model explaining factors influencing the willingness of SME owner-managers to share knowledge online in business networks in rural districts. This is important because e-commerce can assist owner-managers, often dispersed in rural districts, to share knowledge between face-to-face networking events. The main factors associated with willingness to share knowledge online were their willingness to share knowledge face-to-face and their intensity of Internet use. Entrepreneurial factors such as owner-managers' expectations of rapid growth, trading outside the district, and seeking information about customers/competitors were indirectly associated with online sharing via intensity of Internet use only. The model suggests network coordinators could encourage online knowledge sharing by assisting owner-managers to see the business value of e-commerce and by ensuring that networking events are suitable for owner-managers, whether or not they have entrepreneurial goals, to facilitate face-to-face knowledge sharing.