Factors affecting SME owner-managers' willingness to share knowledge online in rural local business networks
Carr, Rodney, Parker, Craig M., Castleman, Tanya and Mason, Cecily 2013, Factors affecting SME owner-managers' willingness to share knowledge online in rural local business networks, Journal of internet commerce, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 307-331.
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Title
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.
Language
eng
Field of Research
150314 Small Business Management
Socio Economic Objective
970108 Expanding Knowledge in the Information and Computing Sciences
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