Factors Influencing Tacit Knowledge Sharing in Research Groups in Higher Education Institutions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper approaches a topic of relevance for higher education.

Here are some comments for its improvement:

- the abstract needs to be completed with more details (no. of responses, country of analysis)

- hypotheses should  not be formulated as questions, but as assumptions

- I suggest to re-name the factors (ex: the organizational factor possibly to name it organizational climate factor) and then use consistently the same name all over the paper.

- under the conceptual description a better distinction (make the difference) is to be done between Organizational Structure Factor and Organizational Climate Factor /Organizational Factor. They both talk about communication within the organization, but they should refer to different aspects of the communication (maybe formal and informal). You have to better differentiate the content of these two factors.

- the conceptual model needs to be presented as a figure

- under methodology more data to be provided about data collection: when? where?

- the full questionnaire needs to be included in the appendix

- it is advisable to include a table indicating all factors and all items and the bibliographical sources used.

- leader=? Under description of sample clarify what do you mean by leader. It is the research project manager or some other position? Please clarify

- the acronyms need to be consistently used throughout the paper. There are used different and incorrect acronyms for composite reliability, for instance.

- You need to include bibliographical sources for the acceptable thresholds of the different measurements (CR, AVE)

- for discriminant validity also use the HTMT test, as it is more reliable than Fornell and Larcker (Hair et al., 2019).

- also include information about the Model fit

- Under Discussion it is mot clear what influences what? What are the individual factors included in the model? What is that it actually influences tacit knowledge sharing? Time, trust and language for individual factors?All combined? How can you appropriately interpret a combined factor like this?

- the factors are to generally defined in order to have a valuable contribution

- in Conclusion, the Organizational factor is interpreted as a barrier, but H3 was not verified.

- theoretical and practical implications and contributions are to be included.

- limitations of the study are to be included.

- still many editing and English mistakes throughout the paper. Ex: Fig. 1

- the reference style in the text is not unitary

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Modernity is an epoch of knowledge and information. So the topic of sharing knowledge is quite relevant. And higher education plays an important role in this process.

Tacit knowledge is the main subject of study but it is nor clarified in details.

"Therefore, when the focus is on knowledge storage, the organisation uses the codification strategy and assumes that it is stored in a database that everyone within the organisation has access to and can use" (lines 201-203) Do you still write about tacit knowledge? It can be stored in a database? How does it connect with previous ideas of the necessity of face-to-face communication?

As a whole it seems that the introduction presents problems of knowledge sharing in a very broad context, many of the research results presented can't be used in Higher education. At least there should be a special section devoted to specialties of higher education institute knowledge sharing.

Research part of the article is presented unsatisfactorily. There is no information on what factors are presented at tables and authors analysed. There should be a table with questions, and answers, and the description, and analysis.

Also please pay attentions to typos (e.g. "Fullwood e Rowley" (line 37), Roberts (2000) e van  den Hooff & Ridde (2004) (lines 118-119), Joia e Lemos (2010) (line 185), Joia e Lemos (2010) e Bock et al. (2005) proposed the variables. Joia e Lemos (2010) (line 223), (Hair et al., 2019)3, (line 278) etc) 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The topic is very interesting and should be easily embraced by the academic audience and not only.

The Title –is long but reflects clear enough the scope and content of the paper.

Abstract: Even if it is brief, the abstract has a standard formulation and presents concisely the purpose, the method, the content, and the results of the research. Although there should be included a phrase speaking about the analysed concepts, about the importance and relevance of the research.  

KEYWORDS – are accordingly.

The Introduction: is complying to its scope and insists in convincing about the importance of the research by concisely presenting the process of tacit knowledge sharing in research groups belonging to HES.  

In the Introduction section, the authors are arguing the usefulness of their research, by introducing references and emphasize the research question as their novel approach: What factors influence the tacit knowledge 52 sharing of teachers-researchers in research groups in Higher Education Institutions?

Literature Revies – Context

Literature review is moderately supporting all the analysed concepts.  

It describes 4 major concepts: individual factors, organizational structure factor, organizational factor, knowledge management strategy factor – but there is a confusion between the 4 factors. A better description and a clearer distinction between the 4 factors should be made. More sources should be included as well as references to examples, case studies and practical perspectives of the analysed concepts.  DOI: 10.2478/picbe-2019-0042 , DOI: 10.24818/EA/2018/49/583 , WOS:000482078200052 ,

The discourse is rather separated into 4 sections which should emerge together at a certain point but the authors fail to integrate them. Arguments about the scope, role, relevance and connections between the factors should be better formulated.

Research design

Research methodology has a short presentation. It is rather contradictory to the complexity of the results analysis. The methodology is not described in accordance to the implemented analysis, the presented results and the proposed model.

Hypothesis and objectives are not clearly enough formulated in order to understand the main purpose and each hypothesis, the investigation method and the proposed methodology for analysis.

A brief notice about the overall research methodology should be introduced at first in order to know what follows.

Descriptive analysis doesn’t occupy too much space in this section but these results are little relevant for the overall impact of the paper.

More attention and space should be awarded to correlation analysis, validation of hypothesis and other important statistical measurements.

Results and discussion

The Discussion section is well presented but in brief paragraphs related to each factor obtained in PLS-SEM. At this point reference to previous similar research result should be made.

For each component and factor are presented and discussed the values and significance for the analysis but interpretations are not relevant enough for the audience. More details about the potential implications of each result should be forecast.

Impact and Limitations

Conclusions are too brief and fail to formulate an overview of the paper and to clearly point the theoretical contributions, the practical implications, the limits and future of the research in terms of extending the present parameters of the research.

The final phrase is confusing because the investigation deals with researchers in HES, and the authors imply that this research should serve managers interests.  This idea should be reformulated because these 2 areas (HES and Business) cannot be overlapped.

Within the Conclusions sections is brought to discussion a new concept “Ba” for arguing the results. It is an inappropriate approach to introduce new ideas in the Conclusions section .. If useful this concept should be discussed earlier in the paper …

The paper has a good potential of increasing its quality and clarity and become interesting and useful for the audience.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The abstract should include more details and give a clear indication of where the paper aims.

In the (1st) -introductive- paragraph, the author(s) use obsolete references whilst, the literature review paragraph is quite short, providing inadequate support on the connection edge between Higher Educational Institutes and Knowledge Management. Please, in both 1st and 2nd paragraphs add contemporary references and try to be more precise on the issue of TK importance to Higher Level Educational Institutes. 

Hypotheses (subparagraphs 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.1.3 and 2.1.4) are quite vague and difficult to understand. There is no disagreement (for instance) that trust and communication are valid and significant factors influencing knowledge transfer but the hypotheses are summarized to general factors such as individual, organizational structure and Organizational factors. Please try to be more specific on those terms and provide the references and definitions where required. 

In the research methodology paragraph, there is a lack of the scientific instrument (questionnaire) description. Please be more specific regarding the items (questions) used and please provide references accordingly. In thick lines, author(s) should provide more details on how the questionnaire was built, to understand the connection with the hypotheses. 

Same observations apply to the definition of Tacit Knowledge Sharing factor...was Nonaka and Takeuchi's SECI model used or some other tacit knowledge model was used?

Also, the sampling method should be more thoroughly discussed and justified. Please try to be more accurate on the number of academics and researchers.

Regarding the findings, you chose to refer to CR indicator, but it would be helpful to mention the Cronbach's alpha value.

In any case, since the reader is not aware of the items measured and the items excluded, numbers are insignificant.

The discussion paragraph is more like a mixture of literature review and results. For instance, in line 318 author(s) writes about the concept of Nonaka and Konno's BA, but there is also no connection with the findings of the research. Author(s) should concentrate on the findings and the implications of the tacit knowledge-sharing process in the HEI's

Conclusions also should be focused on the research and the implications. Author(s) are blurring the landscape adding the pandemic experience. Authors are suggested to stay focused on the issue and add a new paragraph of further research.

The objectives must be more clearly stated in the conclusion section, as well as the limitations of the study.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 5 Report

Dear Authors,

please find my comments attached.

All the best!

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have incorporated the changes suggested by reviewer.

The paper became much clearer and improved.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you! The paper has been significantly improved.
Small comment:

Sentence "The literature suggests that this topic is quite relevant and that there is an evident lack of empirical studies investigating the tacit knowledge- sharing in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)." (lines 8-10) is  superfluous. In the abstract we need the highlighted novelty and the main results themselves, so please provide some main ideas.

Reviewer 4 Report

My main concern was about the questionnaire which was employed. I still hold my worries since the factors are too simplistic and based on Joia and Lemos's survey. For instance, I am not sure that the factor "trust" could be measured with one question, given that trust has a multifold perception amongst employees.  

The correlations found were not convincing -meaning strong enough- to indicate the association between the variables and that was because TKS was not described thoroughly. I would suggest a Principal Component Analysis to be implemented to explore each variable explanation rate. 

In any case, the paper elaborates (on a basic level) on the factors that influence tacit knowledge between teachers-researchers in research groups in Higher Education Institutions, but I have difficulty accepting that the Organizational Culture fails to facilitate (tacit) knowledge transfer. On my behalf, I would suggest the author(s) to work more on this interesting idea and more specifically improve the questionnaire, which is the key research instrument.

Reviewer 5 Report

Dear Authors!

Congratulations for the article! Thank you for the opportunity to read your work! I see the 2nd version contains my advice. The article has improved significantly!

Only some formatting things remains - but I think it is up to the editing team!

All the best!