Charismatic leadership and tacit knowledge sharing in the context of enterprise systems learning: the mediating effect of psychological safety climate and intrinsic motivation

ABSTRACT

Drawing upon charismatic leadership and intrinsic motivation theory, we developed a theoretical model to examine the impact mechanism of leader charisma on individuals’ tacit knowledge-sharing behaviour in the context of an Enterprise Systems learning team. We conducted a survey-based field study to examine the theoretical model and hypotheses. A total of 153 questionnaires were distributed to employees from more than 20 branches of the Beidahuang Group in China and 117 valid questionnaires were returned. Results from partial least squares analysis suggest that leader charisma has a strong influence on psychological safety climate, which in turn has a positive impact on individuals’ intrinsic motivation and their tacit knowledge-sharing behaviour. Our research findings unpack the impact mechanism of charismatic leadership on tacit knowledge sharing, and provide guidelines for the team leader to exhibit charismatic leadership traits in order to promote a psychological safety climate and facilitate an effective knowledge sharing of enterprise systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Charismatic leadership
• psychological safety climate
• intrinsic motivation
• enterprise systems
• tacit knowledge sharing

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the respondents for their cooperation in the field study and for their time and contribution.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71301035, 71371059, 71472053, 71429001), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2015T80362, 2013M541399), the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (20132302110017, 20132302120017) and the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province (LBH-Z13109).