Reciprocity in Knowledge Sharing Research: An Attempt to Consolidate Diverse Meanings and Uses

The first purpose of this paper is to present a review of reciprocity in management research, with a particular focus on its use in knowledge sharing studies. The second purpose is to synthesize the varied conceptualizations and measures in the literature into a model with hypotheses to guide future research. Three commonly used theoretical perspectives are reviewed for their underlying assumptions, measures and applications – social exchange, social capital and social influence. Main findings include that reciprocity is not often studied with multiple levels (group, individual, etc.), even though group and individual reciprocity are clearly distinguished in each perspective. Individual reciprocity has three distinct facets important to predict behavior – beliefs, expectations, and attitudes. Finally, the longitudinal nature of reciprocity is rarely studied, even though its role in the theory is critical. Researchers agree that reciprocity is a construct that has not been clearly defined and this lack of ...