Over the last couple of decades, the argument that knowledge is the primary locus of organizations’ competitive advantage has become highly influential (Davenport & Prusak, 1998; Kapoor & Adner, 2012; Zheng, Yang, & McLean, 2010). As a consequence, the interest on how knowledge is manifested in organizations has dramatically increased, and the issue of how processes related to the creation, transfer and use of knowledge between members in organizations can be governed has been placed on the agenda of the human resource management (HRM) literature (Foss & Michailova, 2009; Galunic, Sengupta, & Petriglieri, 2014). The extant literature offers examples regarding how managerial interventions can influence employees’ engagement in knowledge sharing activities. In particular it has been suggested that aspects such as flexible work practices or performance management systems (Minbaeva, 2008) may influence the degree of employees’ knowledge sharing. However, our knowledge of how such interventions can be designed and implemented remains quite rudimentary. In this study, we address this knowledge gap by increasing our understanding of the governance of intraorganizational knowledge sharing behaviors. Specifically, we propose that knowledge sharing can be partly explained as a combination of three interrelated aspects: cooperative climate, intrinsic motivation and job autonomy.

Knowledge sharing has been positively linked to the creation of new products and services (Smith, Collins, & Clark, 2005; Zhou & Li, 2012), the transfer of best organizational practices (Pallotti, Tubaro, & Lomi, 2015; Szulanski, 1996) and the development of competitive advantage (Reagans & McEvily, 2003). Knowledge management scholars have dedicated considerable attention to the antecedents of knowledge-sharing behavior, often in the form of some combination of environmental factors and individual characteristics (Bartol & Srivastava, 2002; Mueller, 2014).

A important aspect in promoting intra-organizational knowledge sharing is the cooperative climate in the organization (
Cerne, Nerstad, Dysvik, &
Skerlavaj, 2014; Kettinger, Li, Davis, & Kettinger, 2015), defined as the “organizational norms that emphasize personal effort toward group outcomes or tasks as opposed to individual outcomes” (Collins & Smith, 2006). Scholars have argued that organizations can effectively influence knowledge sharing through different HRM practices and architectures (Minbaeva, Makel € a, € & Rabbiosi, 2012). However, such practices are often particularly difficult to implement due to the discretionary nature of knowledge sharing, the difficulties associated to monitoring and formal rewarding as well as the potential crowding-out effects of managerial interventions (Foss, Minbaeva, Pedersen, & Reinholt, 2009; Osterloh & Frey, 2000).