Analysis of Factors Affecting Knowledge Sharing and Its Consequences in the SHAD Network as a Virtual Community of Practice Based on Chen and Hung's Model: a Case Study of Elementary School Teachers in Khorramabad City

Purpose: Knowledge sharing is an important process in organizational strategy, which can create added value for the organization. Knowledge sharing helps to learn, improve performance, achieve sustainable success, and achieve the organization's goals, thereby creating a knowledge-based competitive advantage and promoting society. A virtual community of practice (CoP) is a professional virtual community (PVC) for experts. They use this medium to share knowledge, improve professional abilities, gain insight, and solve work problems. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the factors affecting knowledge sharing and its consequences in the Shaad network as a virtual community of practice for elementary school teachers in Khorramabad city.

Method: This research is applied and descriptive-correlational. This study is based on the conceptual model of Chen and Hung (2011). The structural equation modeling techniques by SmartPLS and SPSS were used to test the hypotheses. 2208 elementary school teachers in Khorramabad City are part of the research population. 327 of them were chosen as the research sample by stratified random sampling using the Karjesi and Morgan table. A questionnaire was used to gather the data.

Findings: The demographic characteristics of the respondents showed that 237 (72.48%) were women and 90 (27.52%) were men. With regard to their level of education, 199 participants (60.86%) had a bachelor's degree, 118 (36.08%) a master's degree, 7 (2.14%) a PhD, and three (0.92%) an associate's degree. The descriptive indices of the research variables indicated that the average of each of the variables of the norm of reciprocity, interpersonal trust, knowledge sharing self-efficacy, perceived relative advantage, knowledge contributing behavior, knowledge collecting behavior, perceived compatibility, knowledge utilization, and community promotion, respectively, is 4.268; 3.882; 4.104; 4.358; 4.336; 2.900; 4.084; 4; and 3.739. The results of the structural equation modeling showed that the variables of interpersonal trust (B = 0.129), perceived relative advantage (B = 0.152), knowledge sharing self-efficacy (B = 0.190), and norm of reciprocity (B = 0.251) had a significant impact on teachers' knowledge-contributing behavior. In addition, there's a significant impact of the perceived relative advantage variable (B = 0.449) on the behavior of collecting knowledge. Teachers' knowledge-contributing behavior has led to knowledge utilization (B = 0.423). Also, the three variables of knowledge contributing behavior (B = 0.411), knowledge collecting behavior (B = 0.197), and knowledge utilization (B = 0.363) had a significant effect on the community promotion variable.

Conclusion: Primary teachers have a crucial role in students' education, so it's critical to determine how to best utilize their specialized knowledge and experiences as the system's strongest pillar. It's also advised to discuss why teachers need to share their knowledge. Through this approach, instructors' culture of information exchange is progressively fostered. in the sense that teachers commit to and view the sharing and collecting of knowledge as valuable. In this instance, they communicate based on internal drive and share knowledge to advance themselves. Teachers will therefore continuously look for ways to reduce mistakes and roadblocks and boost productivity at work. It is also feasible to request that knowledgeable educators develop the required material based on current demands and modifications in the learning environment and then distribute it via the SHAD network platform. This makes it easier for teachers to share knowledge and can contribute to the ongoing improvement of the knowledge generated. Furthermore, there are no geographical or temporal restrictions on the knowledge that a more seasoned teacher can impart to younger, less experienced educators. The SHAD network will function in this scenario as a knowledge management system or a repository for knowledge for the educational system.



Keywords: Knowledge Sharing; Norm of reciprocity; Interpersonal Trust; Knowledge Sharing Self-efficacy; Perceived Relative Advantage; Perceived Compatiability; Virtual Community of Practice; SHAD Network; Elementary School Teachers; Khorramabad.