Manjit Singh Sandhu

Organisational culture's influence on tacit knowledge‐sharing behaviour

Purpose – This research aimed at investigating the influence of organisational culture types on tacit knowledge sharing behaviour in Malaysian organisations.Design/methodology/approach – Survey data was collected from 362 participants from seven organisations. Multiple regression was used to assess the research model.Findings – The research findings indicate that organisational culture types influence tacit knowledge sharing behaviour and that such influences may be positive or negative depending on the culture type.Research limitations/implications – The study only investigated seven organisations. A larger sample size may be necessary for a study of this nature. Aside from this the ipsative rating scale was not clearly understood by the respondents resulting in scoring errors by some.Practical implications – Knowledge is considered the one and only distinct resource and is crucial for an organisation to sustain its competitive advantage. Determining the organisations culture type will allow managers to...

Knowledge sharing among public sector employees: evidence from Malaysia

Purpose – The main purpose of this paper is to: identify the views of public sector employees towards the importance of Knowledge Sharing (KS); identify the barriers to KS; and identify initiatives that may encourage KS.Design/methodology/approach – The design employed in this research was mainly descriptive in nature. A survey‐based methodology employing a research questionnaire was used to elicit the views of public sector employees towards KS. A total of 320 questionnaires were randomly distributed and 170 were successfully collected, giving a response rate of 60 percent.Findings – The results showed that the respondents were very positive in their views towards “importance of KS” and they also strongly felt that knowledge was a source of competitive advantage. However, they were of the view that the importance of knowledge sharing was not clearly communicated and many of them were not sure whether KS strategy existed in their department. The public sector employees also showed self‐serving biases when...

Knowledge sharing in an American multinational company based in Malaysia

Purpose – This paper seeks to examine the views of executives working in an American based multinational company (MNC) about knowledge sharing, barriers to knowledge sharing, and strategies to promote knowledge sharingDesign/methodology/approach – This study was carried out in phases. In the first phase, a topology of organizational mechanisms for knowledge sharing was developed. A review of academic and practitioner literature provided the basis for this topology. In the next phase, a detailed field‐base case study of the knowledge sharing conceptualization in a large MNC was performed based on a sample of 81 employees.Findings – The results show that most of the respondents agreed that there is a knowledge sharing strategy and there is a growing awareness of the benefit of knowledge sharing in the organization. However, it was worrying to know that 22 percent responded negatively to the statement “KS is important to the organization”. Also, 27 percent of the respondents were also not willing to share kn...

Internationalisation of born global firms: Evidence from Malaysia

The purpose of this study is to identify the key factors that lead to early internationalisation of young small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a developing country context and to examine the internationalisation path of born global firms in terms of initial and subsequent mode-of-entry decisions. This study analyses 10 born global SMEs using a multiple-case-study method. Multiple sources of data are used, including semi-structured in-depth interviews, a questionnaire and secondary data. It is found that factors that influence born global internationalisation are made up of the interplay of three major factors, namely the individual founder/manager specific characteristics, firm-specific resources and the external environment. The most important factor that emerged was the entrepreneurial orientation of founders/managers. This study also found that born global firms do not follow a stepwise-entry strategy. Due to the largely qualitative nature of the study, the findings cannot be statistically generalised to other similar contexts. Nonetheless, theoretical generalisation is possible. An integrated framework of the factors that drive born global internationalisation is presented, together with an overview of born-global-entry strategies.

Organizational climate, trust and knowledge sharing: insights from Malaysia

Purpose – The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of organizational climate and trust (TR) on knowledge-sharing (KS) behaviour in selected multinational firms in an emerging market – Malaysia. Two dimensions of KS – knowledge collecting (KC) and knowledge donating (KD) – were separately studied for this research. Design/methodology/approach – Survey data were collected from 231 participants from 25 multinational firms. Multivariate analysis was used to assess the research model. Findings – The research findings indicate that organizational climate dimension, affiliation, is positively related to both KD and KC, while fairness dimensions of organizational climate are not positively related to KD and KC. Among the two dimensions of TR (cognitive and affective), it was found that cognitive TR is positively related to KD, while affective TR is positively related to KC. Research limitations/implications – The sampling was confined to the Klang Valley area of Malaysia. Practical implications – Th...

Entrepreneurial inclination of students at a private university in Malaysia

Most past studies on studentsʼ entrepreneurial intention tend to focus on the phenomenon in developed countries.There is limited research on entrepreneurial intention of university students from developing nations. This article intends to close this gap by providing some insights into students℉ entrepreneurial inclination in a developing country, Malaysia. A total of 234 students from three faculties at both graduate and undergraduate levels were surveyed to examine their entrepreneurial inclination and also to examine the relationship between their demographic and social characteristics with entrepreneurial inclination.The study found strong entrepreneurial inclination among the students. Significant difference was found between students studying part time and full time and their entrepreneurial inclination. Significant difference was also found between the type of program enrolled in and students℉ entrepreneurial inclination. Further analysis and other findings were reported and recommendation for future research are been put forth in this article.