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Studies have examined the influence of knowledge-sharing factors on attitudes and intentions to share knowledge; thus, there is a need to add to the limited research to examine individuals’ actual knowledge-sharing behaviour (KSB). Drawing upon the social cognitive theory (SCT) and transformational leadership, this study aims to develop a new research model which modifies the standard SCT model and augments it with other theories to examine academics’ KSBs.

Questionnaire surveys based on literature and pilot study were conducted with 785 academic staff from four Vietnamese public universities. This study applied structural equation modelling to test the proposed research model and hypotheses.

The findings show that environmental factors (subjective norms, trust) and personal factors (knowledge self-efficacy, enjoyment in helping others) had positive impacts on KSB; KSB had a strongly positive effect on innovative behaviour; and transformational leadership positively moderated the effects of subjective norms, trust and knowledge self-efficacy on KSB. Interestingly, psychological ownership of knowledge was found to have insignificant associations with KSB.

The study findings can be used by university leaders, academic staff and researchers in other similar contexts.

Until now, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, no studies have applied SCT as a primary lens, in which transformational leadership positioned in a focal behaviour also affected KSB, to investigate research on KSB in organisations, especially in institutions of higher education.

The purpose of this paper is to present two case studies hosted between 2012 and 2013 by Woolworths Limited with recommendations to address the question of why has implementing new processes into well-established organisations proved to be problematical.

The research framework used is a novel synthesis of actor–network theory (ANT) with Miller’s living systems theory (LST). Systems at each LST level are actors in an actor-network. Higher LST-level actors punctualise lower-level actor-networks, enabling the fine-grained study of dynamic associations within the LST structure. Qualitative measures assess the collaboration’s progress.

Gaps were found between teams’ capabilities to implement new processes and that required to meet expectations. There were three contributors to the gap: first, knowledge flow was inhibited by social network structural holes; second, a reliance on tacit knowledge made identifying training needs difficult; and third, high utilisation of experts reduced their effectiveness.

The nature of logistics means that findings need careful validation before application to other business contexts. Larger studies will benefit from computer mediation for parsing and characterising associations, and computational modelling will be required for validating scenarios that cannot be performed or repeated with human actors.

Recommendations for early identification of new ideas that require facilitation will help organisations enhance their adaptability and maintain their competitive advantage in a changing marketplace.

The synthesis of ANT with LST provides collaboration researchers with an adaptable framework that combines a focus on dynamic associations within the context of complex social interactions.