This study examines the knowledge sharing (KS) practices of local-level non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Operating at the coalface of sustainable development, these NGOs often struggle for survival due to their relatively small size, limited resources, fluid organizational structures, and reliance on specific individuals. Because KS has the potential to offset some of these shortcomings, better understanding the current KS practices and challenges of these less studied NGOs is important to improve their longevity and sustain the impact they have on the communities they serve. Using interview data from local-level NGOs in Tamil Nadu, India, we established that KS mainly happens on a situational, ad hoc basis when opportunities and possibilities align. The main barriers to more structural ways for KS to occur at the local-level were found to arise from the predominantly voluntary makeup of the workforce as well as the differences in operational styles between the various local-level NGOs. As such, this study concludes that local-level NGOs seem to lack an organizational capacity to institutionalize KS in their existing networks and we offer several recommendations for local-level NGOs to harness the potential benefits of KS more fully.

这项研究考察了地方非政府组织（NGOs）的知识共享（KS）做法。这些NGO的规模相对较小，资源有限，组织结构不固定以及对特定个人的依赖，它们经常在可持续发展的交界处运作，为生存而挣扎。由于KS有潜力弥补其中的一些不足，因此，更好地了解这些学习较少的NGO的当前KS做法和挑战对于提高其寿命并维持其对所服务社区的影响非常重要。利用来自印度泰米尔纳德邦的地方非政府组织的访谈数据，我们确定，KS主要是在机会和可能性一致的情况下临时发生的。人们发现，在地方一级以更结构化的方式进行KS的主要障碍是由于劳动力的自愿组成以及各个地方非政府组织之间的运作方式不同而引起的。因此，本研究得出的结论是，地方非政府组织似乎缺乏在其现有网络中将KS制度化的组织能力，并且我们为地方非政府组织提供了一些建议，以更充分地利用KS的潜在利益。