Organizational Learning: Creating, Retaining, and Transferring Knowledge
Organizational Learning: Creating, Retaining, and Transferring Knowledge
If Only We Knew What We Know: The Transfer of Internal Knowledge and Best Practice
If Only We Knew What We Know: The Transfer of Internal Knowledge and Best Practice
Coordinating Expertise Among Emergent Groups Responding to Disasters
Organization Science
Price Mechanism for Knowledge Transfer: An Integrative Theory
Journal of Management Information Systems
Not-Sold-Here: How Attitudes Influence External Knowledge Exploitation
Organization Science
Safe Contexts for Interorganizational Collaborations Among Homeland Security Professionals
Journal of Management Information Systems
Status Differences in the Cognitive Activation of Social Networks
Organization Science
Factors of stickiness in transfers of know-how between MNC units
The Journal of Strategic Information Systems
In or Out: An Integrated Model of Individual Knowledge Source Choice
Journal of Organizational and End User Computing
Dual Signals: How Competition Makes or Breaks Interfirm Social Ties
Organization Science
| Hi-index | 0.01 |
We compare how people react to good ideas authored by internal rivals (employees at the same organization) versus external rivals (employees at a competitor organization). We hypothesize that internal and external rivals evoke contrasting kinds of threats. Specifically, using knowledge from an internal rival is difficult because it threatens the self and its competence: It is tantamount to being a “follower” and losing status relative to a direct competitor. By contrast, external rivals pose a lower threat to personal status, so people are more willing to use their knowledge. We conducted three studies. Study 1 showed that internal and external rivalry involved opposite relationships between threat and knowledge valuation: The more threat internal rivals provoked, the more people avoided their knowledge, whereas the more threat external rivals provoked, the more people pursued their knowledge. Study 2 explored the types of threat that insiders and outsiders evoked. In particular, people assumed that they would lose more personal status if they used an internal rival's knowledge and, therefore, reduced their valuation of that knowledge. Finally, Study 3 found that self-affirmation attenuated these patterns. We suggest that the threats and opportunities for affirmation facing the self dictate how people respond to rivals and, ultimately, their willingness to value new ideas.