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Social Network, Social Trust and Shared-Goals towards Organizational-Knowledge Sharing

Romiro G. Bautista*, May A. Bayang

Research Department, Cagayan valley Computer and Information technology College, Inc., Santiago City, Philippines

Abstract: This study ascertains that organizational-knowledge sharing is facilitated by social network, social trust and shared-goal in a culture of trust, cooperation and participation. Trust advancement and civil participation networks facilitate relationship and reinforce existing information about trust of people. Individuals move closer to each other in social ceremonies by doing the same behaviors. This concordance leads to trust and confidence and high social participation in limited, medium and wide ranges. There is a close relationship between in group trust and participation and formation of voluntary and civil associations. Employing Descriptive Research design, including survey, in-depth study, correlation and comparison, data was gathered on the prevalence of organizational-knowledge sharing. It was found out that social network, social trust and shared-goals are independent of age and educational attainment; however, social thrust was found dependent with the respondents’ work-department. Moreover, social network social trust and shared-goals were found highly significantly related to their attitude towards knowledge-sharing, subjective norms on knowledge-sharing, and intentions to share knowledge.

Keywords: social network, social trust, shared-goals, organizational-knowledge sharing

Received April 21, 2015; Revised April 26, 2015; Accepted May 08, 2015

Citation: Romiro G. Bautista, May A. Bayang, Social Network, Social Trust and Shared-Goals towards Organizational-Knowledge Sharing. American Journal of Educational Research, 3 (5). 662-667. January 2015. doi:10.12691/education-3-5-21

1. Introduction

Successful organizations use mechanisms that ensure equal opportunities among its employees to participate in the realization of the company goals and objectives particularly on organizational-knowledge sharing. One of the strategies is the development of a 2-way flow of information on its communication strategies and a regular monitoring scheme on its effectiveness. Clear organizational and management structure is realized when employees are free to participate in building a culture of thrust and confidence: working together in peace and harmony [1].

Organizational-knowledge sharing is facilitated by social network, social trust and shared-goal in a culture of trust, cooperation and participation. Trust advancement and civil participation networks facilitate relationship and reinforce existing information about trust towards organizational-knowledge sharing. When economic and political transactions in compact networks of social interaction is formed, opportunism and law violation is decreased while compact social relationship and other worthy techniques for dignity as the main bases of trust in complicated organization is facilitated. The increase in organizational participation, together with social network, social trust and shared-goals, is relative to the conversion of personal or special trust to specialized social trust leading to a better organizational-knowledge sharing. Social trust as a personal view is also regarded as an emergency asset of social and organizational system towards employee empowerment [2-8].

Individuals move closer to each other in social ceremonies by doing the same behaviors. This concordance leads to trust and confidence and high social participation in limited, medium and wide ranges. There is a close relationship between in group trust and participation and formation of voluntary and civil associations. In a view, trust shapes groups and encourages individuals to cooperate as associations systematically and in another one, voluntary activities of individuals in associations result in growth and reinforcement of their trust in a shared culture of developing shared-goals [2-8]. Eminent authors and scholars believe that "many social interest and sciences are obtained by membership and participation of groups. Therefore, society, school and work environments are the most important atmosphere for trust formation" and help increase in social participations [7,8]. Hence, developing a shared-culture of organizational-knowledge sharing through social network, social trust and shared-goals.

Social Capital Factors. The theory on social capital factors elucidates on the characteristics of macro-sociology and the belief that social capital (trust and relationship network) to result in a better social participation. This is imperative to immaterial wealth and other resources as a result of social participation. Appurtenant thereto, social participation is a consequence of rational choices of individuals, imagined as target-oriented people. The trust formed among people is a preconditioned rational action and participation of different grounds. Social capital may be introduced as networks of voluntary association developing on trust. Trust and participation have bilateral relationship, trust arising from group life and provides spontaneously facilities for formation of associations at the same time. Hence, the theory of social capital puts forward that the more relationship, the more trust that is developed and vice versa. Social trust, mutual interaction norms, civil participation networks and effective cooperation reinforce each other. Existence of efficient cooperation-oriented institutions is subject to skills and interpersonal trust while those are strengthened via organized cooperation. Norms and civil participation help to economic-social welfare. Furthermore, trust and cooperation depend on the establishment of trustful relationships. It means that there is authority and freedom in cooperation continuation by agents [3].

Theory of Planned Behavior. Theory of Planned Behavior is a theory that predicts deliberate behavior. It suggests that a person’s behavior is determined by his intention to perform the behavior and that this intention is, in turn, a function of his attitude towards the behavior and his subjective norms. The best predictor of behavior is intention. Intention is the cognitive representation of a person’s readiness to perform a given behavior, and it is considered to be immediate antecedent of behavior. This behavior is determined by 3 things: their attitude towards specific behavior, their subjective norms, and their perceived behavioral control. The theory of planned behavior holds that only specific attitudes towards behavior in question can be expected to predict that behavior. In addition, measuring attitudes towards behavior is imperative to measuring people’s subjective norms – their beliefs on how people care about behaviors in question. To predict a person’s intentions requires knowledge on the person’s attitude. Finally, perceived behavioral control refers to people’s perceptions of their ability to perform a given behavior. These predictors lead to an intention. As a general rule, the more favorable the attitude and the subjective norm is, the greater the perceived control on the person’s intention to perform the behavior in question [9].

Theory of Reasoned Action. This theory explicates how inner drives, as motivation, affects the action and intention of an individual. This further affects his performance and work-related behavior. This theory states that (1) the more favorable the attitude of an individual toward a behavior, the stronger will be the intention of the individual to engage in the behavior; (2) the greater the subjective norm, the stronger the intention of the individual to perform the behavior; and (3) the stronger the intention of the individual to engage in a behavior, the more likely the individual will be to perform it [6,10,11]. TRA has been successfully applied in many research studies in social psychology, knowledge management, medical studies, and IT adoption [6].

1.1. Objectives of the Study

This study is designed to determine the social network, social trust and shared goals towards organizational-knowledge sharing of the employees of Cagayan Valley Computer and Information and Technology College, Inc. (CVCITC).

Specifically, it sought to find explanations of the:

1. social network, social trust and shared-goals of CVCITC employees;

2. significant difference on the social network, social trust and shared-goals of CVCITC employees when grouped according to:

a. age;

b. educational attainment; and

c. work designation.

3. significant relationship of social network, social trust and shared-goals to attitude, subjective-norm and intention to knowledge-sharing of CVCITC employees.

2. Methodology

The Descriptive Research design was used in this study as it tried to gather data on the prevalence of organizational-knowledge sharing among the employees of an organization. This research design fits best in studies which aim is to describe the nature of situations as it exists at the time of the study and to explore the cause of a particular phenomenon. Among the various types of descriptive research design, 4 rightly applied: survey, in-depth study, correlation and comparison.

The respondents of this study were the 30 full-time employees of Cagayan Valley Computer and Information Technology College in Santiago City, Philippines. They were grouped according to age, educational attainment and work designation. A questionnaire was adopted from the study of Chow and Chan in 2008 on Organizational-knowledge sharing [6]. Hence, a valid and reliable instrument.

Data were collected among the employees of Cagayan Valley Computer and Information Technology College in Santiago City, Philippines through a channeled internal communication to the college officials. This effort was endeavored for academic purposes, which respondents’ identity was kept confidential. Data were tallied, treated and analyzed to give shed on the formulated research problems. The weighted mean, ANOVA and Pearson-r correlation were used in this study. It made use of SPSS in treating the data gathered.

Figure 1. Research Paradigm

Figure 1 presents the paradigm of the study. It presents the relative impact of social network, social trust and shared-goals in the development of organizational attitude, subjective-norm and intentions of people in an organization. These factors interfere with the each other in their realization towards the development of cooperation and participation in a climate of living to live together in peace and harmony. This realization is believed to hasten the organization’s knowledge sharing mechanism observed and practiced by its employees.

3. Results and Discussion

Table 1 presents the general prevalence of social network, social trust and shared-goals among the CVCITC employees. As it can be gleaned on the table, there is moderately high prevalence and observance of social network, social trust and shared-goals among the CVCITC employees: mean of 3.756, 3.811 and 3.833, respectively, and interpreted as often in a 5-point Likert scale. The foregoing results imply that there is good state of organizational-knowledge sharing. Eminent authors and researchers claimed that organizational-knowledge sharing is facilitated by social network, social trust and shared-goal in a culture of trust, cooperation and participation. Concomitantly, trust advancement and civil participation networks facilitate relationship and reinforce existing information about trust towards organizational-knowledge sharing [2-8,12,14,15].

Table 1. The Social Network, Social Trust and Shared-Goals of CVCITC employees

Table 2. Test of difference on the social network, social trust and shared-goals of CVCITC employees when grouped according to Age

Presented in Table 2 are the tests results on the prevalence of social network, social trust and shared goals among CVCITC employees when grouped according to age. It presents that a Levene’s test was conducted prior to conducting the t-test for equality of means. It was found out that there is no significant difference on the variances of the grouped responses: F-values of 1.354, .250 and .601, and p-values of .254, .621 and .445, at .05 level of significance. This means that equal variances are found on the 2 groups of respondents.

On the other hand, t-test results show that there is no significant difference on the perceived prevalence of social network, social trust and shared goals among CVCITC employees when grouped according to age: t-values of -1.270, -1.435 and -1.160, and p-values of .214, .162 and .256, at .05 level of significance. This means that the 2 groups of respondents perceived the prevalence of social network, social thrust and shared goals in a comparable state. This further entails that there is no stratification in the working climate of the institution. Employees are working together in shared culture of social network, social thrust and shared goals whether they are young or old. Hence, the null hypothesis is accepted.

The foregoing results is supported with the claims of various authors and researchers when they claimed that members of organizations like society, schools and work environment must form a culture of oneness towards the ultimate goal of working together as a team [7,8,11,13]. Aptly, every employee develops better working behaviors and relationships when they feel that they belong to the same clout of beliefs and behaviors. The foregoing conditions can lead into the development of trust and confidence, as well as high social participation in limited, medium and wide ranges of knowledge-sharing. Concomitantly, it was claimed that there is a close relationship between in-group trust and participation, and the formation of voluntary and civil associations [2-8,11,14,15].

Table 3. Test of difference on the Social Network, Social Trust and Shared-Goals of CVCITC Employees when grouped according to Educational Attainment

Presented in Table 3 are the test results on the prevalence of social network, social trust and shared goals among CVCITC employees when grouped according to educational attainment. It presents that there is no significant difference on their perceived prevalence: F-values of .249, .145 and 1.547, and p-values of .782, .866 and .231, respectively for social network, social thrust and shared goals, at .05 level of significance. This means that the respondents had a comparable perception on the prevalence of social network, social trust and shared goals across their educational attainment. This further implies that there is no stratification in the working climate of the institution. Employees are working together in shared culture of social network, social thrust and shared goals regardless of their education background, e.g., Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctorate. Hence, the null hypothesis is accepted.

Trust, as claimed by authors and researchers, shapes the groups’ working environment and encourages its members to cooperate and engage themselves in associations systematically. Astutely, the voluntary activities and initiatives of the individual members in associations are imperative to an optimum growth and reinforcement of their trust in a shared culture of developing shared-goals [7,8,11,14,15]. Furthermore, the Theory on Social Capital Factors elucidates that the development of social capital (trust and relationship network) is essential to a better social participation among the members of the organization. Purportedly, social capital is introduced as networks of voluntary association stemmed from trust. Trust and participation are bilaterally related to each other; trust arising from group life provides spontaneously facilities participatory to the formation of associations. Hence, the theory of social capital puts forward that the more relationship, the more trust is developed, and vice versa [3,12,13,14,15].

Table 4. Test of difference on the Social Network, Social Trust and Shared-Goals of CVCITC Employees when grouped according to Department

Presented in the foregoing table are the test results on the prevalence of social network, social trust and shared goals among CVCITC employees when grouped according to department. It presents that there is no significant difference on their perceived prevalence: F-values of 1.575, and 2.257, and p-values of .219 and .106, respectively for social network and shared goals, at .05 level of significance. This means that the respondents had a comparable perception on the prevalence of social network and shared goals across their departmental assignment. Hence, the null hypothesis is accepted.

However, a significant difference is observed in social trust: F-value of 4.664 and p-value of .010, at .05 level of significance. This means that there is a stratified prevalence of social trust when respondents are grouped according to departmental assignment. Hence, the null hypothesis is rejected. The foregoing results post an emerging threat to the development of knowledge-sharing if proper attention and course of action are not to be exuded by the top management. The development of disparity and social mistrust between the members of the General Education Courses (GEC) and Staff, as well as the IT-Engineering, is a potential factor that can entangle the development of the spirit of oneness among the members of the group: the mean differences of 1.130 and .750, respectively, suggest a big margin.

At the mainstream is the Theory of Planned Behavior. It suggests that a person’s behavior is determined by his intention to perform the behavior and that this intention is, in turn, a function of his attitude towards the behavior and his subjective norms. The best predictor of behavior is intention. Intention is the cognitive representation of a person’s readiness to perform a given behavior, and it is considered to be immediate antecedent of behavior. This behavior is determined by 3 things: their attitude towards specific behavior, their subjective norms, and their perceived behavioral control. Rooted in the concordance of this behavior is his intention to participate in the development of the goals of the organization. Hence, there must be no emerging stratification whatsoever to be developed within the organization [9].

Table 4.1. Post Hoc Test on the Social Network, Social Trust and Shared-Goals of CVCITC Employees when grouped according to Department

Corollary to the F-test conducted in Table 4 is a Post Hoc Test using Scheffe test in Table 4.1. It presents that Staff members perceived it comparably with IT & Engineering, and BA-Accountancy-HRM departments: mean differences of -.380 and -.487, and p-values of .187 and .105. However, they perceived it incomparably with the GEC people: Mean difference of -1.130 and p-value of .001. The GEC people, on the other hand, perceived it analogously with the BA-Accountancy-HRM people: Mean difference of .643 and p-value of .055. Conversely, they perceived it incomparably with the Staff and IT & Engineering: Mean differences of 1.130, and .750, and p-values of .001 and .023. The IT & Engineering group perceived it comparably with the staff and BA-Accountancy-HRM group: mean differences of .380 and -.107, and p-values of .187 and .722. Nevertheless, IT & Engineering perceived it incomparably with the GEC group: mean difference of -.750 and p-value of .023. Astutely, the BA-Accountancy-HRM group perceived it analogously with the staff, GEC and IT & Engineering: mean differences of .487, -.643 and .107, and p-values of .105, .055 and .722.

Table 5. Test of relationship on Social Network, Social Trust and Shared-Goals to Attitude, Subjective-Norm and Intention to Knowledge-Sharing of CVCITC employees

Presented in Table 5 are the test results for correlation on the social network, social trust and shared-goals to attitude, subjective-norm and intention to knowledge-sharing of CVCITC employees. It presents that social network is highly significantly related to attitudes towards knowledge sharing, subjective norms on knowledge sharing and intentions to share knowledge: r-values of .625, .603 and .527, and p-values of <.001, <.001 and .003, respectively, at .01 level of significance. Moreover, social thrust is also related significantly with attitudes towards knowledge sharing, subjective norms on knowledge sharing and intentions to share knowledge: r-values of .722, .562 and .572, and p-values of <.001, .001, .001, respectively, at .01 level of significance. Aptly, shared goals are also significantly related with attitudes towards knowledge sharing, subjective norms on knowledge sharing and intentions to share knowledge: r-values of .723, .663 and .657, and p-values of <.001, respectively, at .01 level of significance.

The foregoing results are in conformity with the tenets of the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) [10]: how inner drives, as motivation, affect the action and intention of an individual. Concomitant to these drives or motivations are his performances and work-related behaviors. Aptly, the theory posits that (1) the more favorable the attitude of an individual towards a behavior, the stronger is his intention to engage in the behavior; (2) the greater the subjective norm, the stronger the intention of the individual to perform the behavior; and (3) the stronger the intention of the individual to engage in a behavior, the more likely the individual will be to perform it.

4. Implication to Research and Practice

1. Maintaining an excellent work climate is paramount to an effective working condition where everyone is working in a shared-culture of peace and harmony. Having said that social network, social trust and shared-goals are highly significantly related to attitude towards knowledge-sharing, subjective norms on knowledge-sharing and intentions to knowledge-sharing, it is recommended that continuous team-building activities be implemented in an organization. Likewise, a clear two-way communication mechanism is also highly wanting.

2. The disparity in terms of social trust among the employees poses a significant finding that calls an immediate action among educational administrators and planners of the organization. Analysis and relevant studies should be conducted to determine the factors that contributed to its prevalence. Inputs from these studies are potent in mitigating its future occurrences.

3. Educational administrators and planners need to motivate and empower their employees in practicing an academic acumen in a rationalized educational mandate.

References

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