Understanding the Antecedents of Knowledge Sharing Behavior From the Theory of Planned Behavior Model: Cross-Cultural Comparisons Between Mainland China and Malaysia

Affected by coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in addition to keeping away the impact of the pandemic on their business practices, many enterprises have proposed relevant measures to protect their employees’ job safety and security. Especially for enterprises with high dependence on knowledge resources, employees’ innovation and knowledge sharing play a vital role. In the context of global economic austerity, how to put forward the corresponding plan of knowledge sharing intention to improve the knowledge sharing behavior of employees for enterprises is worth discussing. Mainland China and Malaysia have different quarantine policies and similar industrial structures. This study examines the awareness of Mainland China vs. Malaysian employees, and evaluates the relationship among self-efficacy, job security, market orientation, knowledge sharing intention, and knowledge sharing behavior from the theory of planned behavior. In this study, a total of 627 Mainland China and 434 Malaysian participants were collected to compare both groups in the development of employees’ knowledge sharing behavior. In this study, a variance-based partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was performed to test the proposed hypothesis and conduct comparative analysis. The results in both the samples show that self-efficacy, job security, and market orientation have positive and significant effects on knowledge sharing intention; self-efficacy has positive and significant effects on job security; knowledge sharing intention has positive and significant effects on knowledge sharing behavior. Moreover, there are several significant differences between Mainland China and Malaysia in the examinations of path comparisons.