Exploring the antecedents that influence middle management employees' knowledge-sharing intentions in the context of total quality management implementations

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the motivations that affect middle management employees' knowledge-sharing intentions in the context of total quality management (TQM) implementations of Taiwan's information technology (IT) industry. A research model was developed based on TQM implementations and the theory of reasoned action. Survey samples were collected from 395 middle management employees in 50 Taiwanese ISO 9001:2000-certified firms in the IT industry, providing support for the proposed model. LISREL was applied to analyse the measurement and structural models. The analytical results showed that anticipated reciprocal relationships, perceived ethics and self-efficacy have significant direct effects on attitudes towards knowledge sharing and that subjective norms are significantly associated with knowledge-sharing intentions in the context of TQM implementations. However, subjective norms alone do not significantly influence attitudes towards knowledge sharing. Because this study only considered knowledge-sharing intention with regard to TQM implementation, whether these analytical results can be generalised to other research fields is unclear. We expect that future research can replicate this model. The contribution of the present study is the establishment of a model capable of lending an understanding to knowledge-sharing intention relationships for TQM implementation in the Taiwanese IT industry. This study also presents valuable recommendations for TQM literature and practice.