To share or not to share, it depends on member-team Conscientiousness Fit

Drawing on research in person-team fit and similarity-attraction in personality, we examined the effects of the (in)congruence between a member’s personality trait of conscientiousness and a team’s composition of conscientiousness on the members’ knowledge sharing behavior. We conducted two studies using data from Taiwan and the United States. Using the cross-level polynomial regression, we found consistent results showing that when a member and his/her team were congruent with conscientiousness, the member shared more knowledge with teammates. We also found that voice in team partially mediated the relationship between person-team fit in conscientiousness and knowledge sharing by using the block variable approach of mediation analysis. Our study demonstrated that in order to better understand the effect of personality (in our case, conscientiousness) on knowledge sharing in team settings, we need to consider member’s personality and the ways in which the congruence and incongruence between the member and the team personality interplay.