Leadership and knowledge sharing in teams: The effects of the leader's communicative framing of team goals

ABSTRACT

Capitalizing on team members’ knowledge resources is one of the key determinants of the success of a work team, and team leaders play an important role in cultivating team members’ motivation to share their knowledge with each other. This study examined the effects of a leader’s communicative framing of team goals on individuals’ knowledge-sharing intention in a team setting. An experimental study with a 2 (leader’s regulatory focus: promotion vs. prevention) X 2 (leader’s reward focus: process vs. outcome) factorial design revealed that the leader’s process-based reward framing leads to a significantly higher level of knowledge sharing intention than the leader’s outcome-based reward framing. This result suggests that a leader’s communicative framing that emphasizes and incentivizes collaborative processes as opposed to the team’s end outcomes is more likely to encourage team knowledge sharing.

KEYWORDS:

• Leadership
• knowledge sharing
• work teams
• regulatory focus

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kay Yoon

Kay Yoon (Ph.D. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. Her research examines team knowledge sharing, virtual team processes, and communication technologies.

Elena Svetieva

Elena Svetieva (Ph.D. University at Buffalo, State University of New York) is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. Her research focuses on key leadership communication processes – including feedback, emotion communication and nonverbal behavior.