knowledge with each other, becomes rather hesitant in doing so as they see their
colleagues as competitors for the same position of which they aspire.
- Individual Rewards for Performance
Individual rewards or incentives are also a cause for not sharing the information. Each
staff member realizes that their performance is going to be rewarded individually and if
they share the information with others, then that reward may be taken away by others.
This stops them from sharing the information/knowledge thus keeping knowledge to
individual minds only. - Technophobia
Holbech(1999) has listed technophobia as another barrier to knowledge sharing as most
of the formal knowledge management systems uses information technology for easy and
wide spread access. Some of the staff members do not feel comfortable with using any
such technology. - Job Specific Individuals’ Orientation
The job specific focus of the people within the organization prevents them from
considering the broader purpose of the whole organization. In such cases they fail to see
their job as a part to the purpose of the whole organization. As a result of this the
individual is unable to develop the motivation for sharing the knowledge. While
discussing issues of knowledge management Holbech(1999) says:
Another common barrier to the sharing of organizational learning is that
people often focus narrowly on their jobs, rather than the purpose of the
organization as a whole. There can be a heavy emphasis on the short
term which makes the sharing of knowledge for longer-term gains an
impediment to getting the job done now. (p. 427).This means that the employees simply think of completing their tasks only and do
not focus on the purpose of the organization as whole, which could develop the