The impact of market liberalization on knowledge sharing in the utilities industry

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The book explores the organizational transformation processes in the German utilities industry prompted by market liberalization, focusing on the issue of violated trust from an intra-organizational perspective. Trust is crucial to psychological contracts, which significantly influence employee behavior and commitment. Despite the importance of situational context surrounding psychological contracts and their violations, research remains limited. This study builds on the existing concept of broken psychological contracts proposed by Raja and colleagues (2004) by introducing communities of practice as a means to mitigate the negative effects of such violations. These communities serve as essential contextual variables within organizations, where breaches of psychological contracts between employees and management can undermine trust. The competitive environment often leads to unintentional violations, resulting in feelings of betrayal. As trust erodes, voluntary social groupings like communities of practice may emerge as supportive networks, enhancing trust and facilitating knowledge sharing. Given that knowledge is a vital competitive asset, fostering knowledge sharing is seen as a desirable organizational behavior with significant implications for competitiveness. Adopting an epistemological perspective of knowledge as a social construct allows for a comprehensive integration of theoretical concepts, arguing that communities