Using Agent-Based Simulation to Investigate the Dynamics of Knowledge-Exchange in Organisations

Abstract

Knowledge-sharing between employees is a complex and dynamic interpersonal process that we investigate using a system thinking approach. Individuals make their knowledge-related decisions (seeking, sharing, hiding knowledge) based on various factors (their traits, experiences, perception of others and the context). Overall, organizational knowledge-sharing is a product of behavioural dependencies and changes in the behavioural patterns of individuals as well as the interactions between individuals and groups.

In this paper, our goal is to investigate how employees’ reactions to the behaviours of others in the organization, due to disruption or individual behavioural strategy, affect the extent of knowledge-sharing over time. To do this we identify several feedback loops in solicited knowledge-sharing interactions and build an agent-based simulation model of knowledge-sharing in 40-person organization. We perform two ‘in silico’ experiments. The first investigates the organizational consequences of a local disruption that immediately reduces the inclination to seek and share knowledge of a group of individuals. The second experiment compares the organizational consequences of four strategies for deselecting individuals who have previously declined to share knowledge.

The results of the first experiment show that the local event causing higher likelihood of knowledge-rejection affects the overall organizational knowledge exchange due to disruptions in knowledge-seeking attempts. The second experiment indicates that knowledge source selecting strategy reduces not only rejection rates, protecting emotion resources of the seeker, but also reduces knowledge seeking attempts and knowledge-sharing. Empirical studies are needed to obtain more data to enhance the model’s realism and to verify or refute the modelling assumptions.