Promoting knowledge sharing with effective leadership - a case study from socio-organisational perspective

ABSTRACT

This case study concerns enterprise with multiple years of experiences in knowledge management. Through tracking for five consecutive years the annual evaluation of knowledge innovation units within the organisation, those highly engaged units were identified and chosen for subsequent analysis based on a KSB-ecological approach to identify enabling internal factors for sustaining knowledge-sharing behaviour of employees. Research outcomes indicate that knowledge sharing of employees can be driven by two types of leadership: the Transformational Leadership that drives knowledge-sharing behaviour with a vision, and the Inclusive Leadership that, by creating a sense of well-being for employees, promotes knowledge sharing as a valuable act of generosity. Research findings may help enterprises facing bottlenecks in knowledge management to redirect attention to changes of leadership style, remove internal barriers to knowledge sharing, and profoundly nurturing employee proactivity towards building an enabling socio-organisational process for knowledge sharing.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge sharing
• socio-organisational process
• leadership
• well-being
• innovation
• behavior of generosity

Acknowledgments

The author would like to sincerely thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions, which have greatly improved this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.