Preventing identity theft: Identifying major barriers to knowledge-sharing in online retail organisations

Knowledge-sharing (KS) for preventing identity theft has become a major challenge for organisations. The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap in the literature by investigating barriers to effective KS in preventing identity theft in online retail organisations.

A framework was proposed based on a reconceptualisation and extension of the KS enablers framework (Chong et al., 2011). A qualitative case study research method was used for the data collection. In total, 34 semi-structured interviews were conducted in three online retail organisations in the UK.

The findings suggest that the major barriers to effective KS for preventing identify theft in online retail organisations are: lack of leadership support; lack of employee willingness to share knowledge; lack of employee awareness of KS; inadequate learning opportunities; lack of trust in colleagues; insufficient information-sourcing opportunities and information and communications technology infrastructure; a weak KS culture; lack of feedback on performance; and lack of job rotation.

The research provides solutions for removing existing barriers to KS in preventing identity theft. This is important to reduce the number of cases of identity theft in the UK.

This research extends knowledge of KS in a new context: preventing identity theft in online retail organisations. The proposed framework extends the KS enablers framework by identifying major barriers to KS in the context of preventing identity theft.