Research task and dependent variablesParticipants assumed the role of a management con-sultant at a consulting firm, Alpha Consulting. Participantswere told that the overall goal of Alpha Consulting wasto increase fee revenue and, in line with this goal, theirmonthly performance would be evaluated based on fourperformance areas: billable hours, billable rates, dollarvalue of future work requested by clients, and client’sevaluations.4Using a scenario similar to Chow et al. (2000),participants were told that, over the last few years, theyhad built up substantial knowledge and expertise aboutIndustry X, such as a list of useful contacts and relevantbenchmark information. To measure the first dependentvariable, willingness to share knowledge, participants wereasked whether they were willing to spend their time shar-ing this knowledge with a new colleague, Jones, in anotherdepartment (Tax Advisory Department) of Alpha Consul-ting, who was given a portfolio of tax clients in Industry X.It was made clear that although Jones came from a differ-ent department (Tax Advisory), and therefore was not indirect competition with the role assigned to participants,the amount of time spent on sharing this knowledge wouldresult in a delay to one of the client projects the participantsaimed to start this month and would also lower the num-ber of billable hours for the participant in this month. Ourscenario therefore suggests potential costs to knowledgesharing.To measure our second dependent variable, general ten-dency to perform extra-role behaviours, participants werealso asked to respond to six questions based on Williamsand Anderson’s (1991) OCB-I scale. Specifically, these ques-tions ask participants to indicate the extent to which theyare willing to help co-workers when they have been absent,help co-workers with heavy workload, take time to listen toco-workers’ problems, go out of their way to help new co-workers, take a personal interest in co-workers, and passalong information to co-workers.4These four work dimensions are common focuses of business consul-ting firms. ‘Billable hours’ measures the ‘volume’ effect of getting clientwork, and ‘billing rates’ is indicative of the level of the expertise contractedby the client and whether the consulting work is of sufficiently high qual-ity to demand higher prices. Both ‘dollar value of future work requested byclients’ and ‘clients’ evaluations’ are forward looking measures that indi-cate the potential for creating more volume in the future and the abilityto charge higher prices (rates) by satisfying clients.After the dependent variables were measured, partic-ipants completed a post-test questionnaire that includedtwo manipulation check questions and a demographicsurvey. The manipulation check questions asked partici-pants to indicate (a) whether the performance incentivescheme at Alpha Consulting involved explicit weights, and(b) whether the participants received a diagram depictingthe company’s strategic goals.