Exploring knowledge sharing practices in higher education: A Pakistani perspective

Academic and non-academic staff at higher education institutions (HEIs) are two main types of actors, but they represent distinct social worlds and professional orientations. Through regular communication and interaction, they play an important role in achieving the mission of HEIs. However, the review of extant literature on knowledge management (KM) from HEIs perspective exhibited that scholars pay little attention to the investigation of knowledge sharing (KS) practices between these two groups. To address this gap, the study reported in this paper aimed to explore KS practices between academic and non-academic staff of a public sector university of Pakistan. An inductive methodology underpinned by grounded theory was employed to collect, analyse and interpret data. For data collection, 26 faculty and staff members of the University were interviewed using a semi-structured interview. A Straussian grounded theory approach was followed for data collection and data analysis procedures. The study's findings revealed that the staff members follow diverse KS practices and often share tacit and explicit professional knowledge. Through communication, cooperation and coordination, staff share their experiences, understandings about routine procedures, interpretations of rules and regulations and even advice on how to handle difficult professional situations. Moreover, several factors impact on their KS practices, such as types of personality, availability of shared medium and technology-mediated communication. KS is a well-researched stream of KM from the higher education perspective. However, this scholarly work fills the existing research gap in the extant literature. From a holistic perspective, this research presents novel insights about KS practices in HEI settings between two distinct but interdependent groups.