Chinese Cultural Values and Knowledge Sharing

Abstract

In order to address the growing economic and social pressures of the 21st Century, Chinese must build solid foundations for a knowledge-based economy. However, knowledge sharing is relatively uncommon in Chinese communities and there has been little success in understanding the motivations and barriers of knowledge sharing in the Chinese context and thus there appears to be no systematic way to analyze the obstacles to information sharing among Chinese. In possession of Chinese cultural values has been commonly regarded as the reason for knowledge hoarding among Chinese. The present study examines whether or not Chinese's Confucian philosophy is responsible for the reluctance of knowledge sharing.