Knowledge sharing as a requirement for the academic web space community sustainability: A case of UiTM Shah Alam / Norhidayati Mohd Bahar

Research practice is common in higher education institution and is necessary to improve the national’s social and economic standard. Together with the technology evolution, the proliferation of the internet very much helps to create more effective and productive research environment in the higher education institution. In fact, for some countries, the researches conducted by this institution became the main support for their national growth. However, until now, no specific guidelines has been accepted and used as a standard to encourage knowledge sharing practice in research since the factors encouraging the knowledge sharing varies. In this century, knowledge has been accepted as an important asset by organizations to compete in the business market. In order to maximize their business market value, specific online platform has been developed as the strategy to enable collaboration and knowledge sharing practice among their experts to improve their products and services. This strategy is proven to be very supportive in maximizing the value of the knowledge asset and reducing time and traveling cost for knowledge transfer. The outstanding achievement of the online community for knowledge sharing practice leads to our perception that, the existence of the online research community in higher institution provides more effective knowledge sharing platform for the academicians. However, sustaining the online community is not easy. Absolutely, the successful factors of research practice in higher education rely heavily on the strength of collaboration and positive attitude towards knowledge sharing practice by the academicians in research environment. Thus, understanding the knowledge sharing behavior of the academicians becomes a prerequisite for the online research community in order to sustain in higher education institution’s research area. In light of the idea presented, this research is conducted with the purpose to understand the university’s research environment, the knowledge sharing behavior of the academicians and factors that motivate knowledge sharing in an online research community.