The aim of this research was to investigate the effect of the motivation of employees of automotive companies on their knowledge sharing with regard to the mediating role of the organizational trust variable. In this study, a sample of 384 employees from Iran's automotive industry was selected using simple random sampling. The tool used to collect information from the samples was a questionnaire. Additionally, the questionnaire was analyzed using SPSS 25 and the structural equation modeling software SmartPLS V3. The findings show that both internal and external motivation significantly affect knowledge sharing (both knowledge-sharing behavior and intention), and the effects of these motivations were nearly equal and moderate. The research results showed that the independent variables (extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation, and organizational trust) accounted for 57% of the variance in the knowledge-sharing variable among automobile manufacturing employees. Also, the experimental results of this study showed that the organizational trust variable has the role of a (partial) mediating variable in relation to the effect of employees' external motivation on their knowledge sharing. According to the research results, motivational factors (internal and external) are effective in increasing organizational knowledge sharing by increasing the organizational trust of employees. Therefore, it is necessary for practitioners, managers, and activists in the field of knowledge management at the country's automotive industry companies to provide a basis for improving organizational trust and knowledge sharing by increasing employee motivation.
Mantegh et al. (Thu,) studied this question.