Innovation and Knowledge Sharing: A New Competitive Advantage in the Mobile Telecommunication Industry in Ghana

Ghana over the past three decades has witnessed the revolution of economic growth through innovations in the telecommunications sector. This study aims at identifying and examining the influence of the individual and organizational knowledge sharing enablers on knowledge sharing behaviour that leads to the development of firm innovation capability. A questionnaire was developed and administered randomly to a sample of four-hundred employees in the managerial and developmental levels of six mobile telecommunications companies. Three hundred and fifty-one were accepted for analysis. In analysing the data, a simple descriptive statistic was adopted. The results of the analysis affirmed the existence of a positive effect of the individual factor “teamwork in helping others” and the organizational innovation factor “top management support” on the employee knowledge sharing behaviour. Employee willingness to donate and collect knowledge is significantly related to firm innovation capability and has influence on it. However, there is no influence of the individual factor “knowledge self-efficacy” and the organizational factor “organizational rewards” on the employee knowledge sharing behaviour. The researchers therefore concluded that employees in the Ghanaian telecommunications sector are influenced by their managers’ support, help and encouragement to share knowledge more than the organizational rewards system. Hence, they do not expect to receive more rewards to increase their knowledge sharing attitude. The paper provides recommendations to help facilitate knowledge sharing and thereby increase the innovation capabilities of these firms.