The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of the Psychology of Training, Development, and Performance Improvement

16Knowledge-Sharing, Cooperation, and Personal Development

Leonor Pais

Nuno Rebelo dos Santos

Introduction

Since the seminal work by Teece (1981) and Nelson and Winter (1982), knowledge has assumed an increasingly legitimate and important role in organization science. The literature produced on this subject has reflected growing understanding of the relationship between organizational processes and results regarding the creation, sharing, and use of knowledge. There has been a search for integrated understanding of the mechanisms where human knowledge has an influence. Going beyond mere conceptualization, the scientific community has attempted to consider questions related to intervention, responding to the needs, problems, and challenges felt by the different organizational actors. This occurs in the domains of knowledge in general, and in the behavioral and social dimensions of its management in organizations, in particular. One of the aspects of those behavioral and social dimensions is knowledge sharing.

This chapter focuses on knowledge-sharing as a cooperative process in organizations and the impact of knowledge-sharing on personal development. We approach the literature on knowledge-sharing highlighting aspects where this is oriented to the importance of people, the interactions they carry out in organizations and which presuppose/involve cooperation and potentially lead to development of the different organizational actors.

Knowledge has its origin and application ...