Abstract: For any collaborative endeavor to succeed,adequate allocation and sharing of resources are important in inter-organizational collaborative knowledge creation. The purpose of this paper is to explore the condition for resource sharing and maintaining collaboration in inter-organizational collaborative knowledgecreation. Firstly,using the game theoretic framework,the collaboration for knowledge creation is modeled as a Stackelberg leader-follower game with one leader and multi-follower. In this model,decisions are made at two stages. In the first stage,the leader sets the level of its involvement,which is called the participation rate,and in the next stage,the follower reacts to the leaders’ decision by setting an optimal value for the total efforts and respective participation rate. The equilibrium values of current efforts in knowledge creation,the leader and followers’ resource participation rate,and the total expected gain were then determined. Finally,it’s pointed out that maintaining an optimal ratio between the leader’s and followers’ marginal gains is important for the formation and continuation of the collaboration.

Key words: collaborations knowledge creation, resource sharing, Stackelberg game, decision model, cost benefit analysis