How Leader-Member Exchange Affects Knowledge Sharing Behavior: Understanding the Effects of Commitment and Employee Characteristics

Unraveling the perceived overqualification puzzle: The role of distributive justice and leader political skill in influencing knowledge sharing

Perceived overqualification is a prevalent phenomenon in any type of organization due to overeducation and worldwide economic downturn. Despite numerous empirical examinations of such phenomenon, the impact of perceived overqualification on individual behaviors is inconsistent and inconclusive. We draw on equity theory to examine the negative effect of perceived overqualification on knowledge sharing through distributive justice. In addition, we investigate a leader's political skill as a boundary condition that influences the impact of perceived overqualification on distributive justice and subsequent knowledge sharing. Using a sample of 339 team members in South Korea, we found that perceived overqualification negatively impacts distributive justice, subsequently deteriorating employees' knowledge-sharing behaviors. Furthermore, when team leader is politically skilled, the negative impact of perceived overqualification on knowledge sharing is weakened. Theoretical implications and directions for future research are discussed.

How trust in coworkers fosters knowledge sharing in virtual teams? A multilevel moderated mediation model of psychological safety, team virtuality, and self-efficacy

Examining the influence of trust in fostering knowledge sharing behavior (KSB) in virtual teams is of great research value in the current complex, dynamic, and competitive era of a knowledge economy. This study investigated the relationship between trust in coworkers (TC) and KSB. Based on social information processing theory and social cognitive theory, we developed a multilevel moderated mediation model where the team members' psychological safety (PS) was considered a mediator, while team virtuality (TV) and knowledge sharing self-efficacy (KSSE) acted as team and individual-level moderators, respectively. On surveying 282 individuals in 37 virtual teams of three Chinese internet companies, we found that TC positively affected team members' KSB and this relationship was fully mediated by team members' PS. Our findings also demonstrated that the effect of TC on KSB depended on the degree of TV and employees' KSSE. Specifically, when TV and KSSE were higher, the TC-PS and PS-KSB relationship and the mediating effects of PS in the TC-PS-KSB relationship were all stronger. Our study extends the trust-KSB literature by identifying the psychological mechanism and boundary conditions in the TC-KSB relationship. Moreover, our findings also offer valuable managerial implications for virtual team managers on facilitating team members' PS and KSB.

Leader vision, organizational inertia and service hotel employee creativity: Role of knowledge-donating

This paper presents a conceptual model reflecting relationships between visionary leadership and service employee creativity through organizational inertia and knowledge-donating behavior. The research sample consists of 423 employees of 21 four-star hotels in Egypt. The PLS-SEM results revealed that service employee creativity is enhanced when they realize their leaders have visions for the future, are capable of overcoming organizational inertia, along with keeping up with simultaneous changes. The results revealed that this behavior dampens the negative relationship between visionary leadership and organizational inertia. The theoretical and practical implications of the extracted results are discussed.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-02743-6.

Knowledge Sharing Among Healthcare Practitioners: Identifying the Psychological and Motivational Facilitating Factors

There exists a lack of an understanding of how to facilitate knowledge sharing (KS) behaviors in healthcare organizations. This study is among the first to specifically address this issue through synthesizing psychological ownership (PO), self-determination theory, and psychological empowerment (PE) theory. This study developed a research model that described the impact of the psychological and motivational facilitating factors, including autonomous motivation, user PE, and PO on knowledge sharing intention (KSI) and knowledge sharing behavior (KSB). Data collected from 343 healthcare professionals were analyzed using the technique of partial least squares (PLS) to validate the research model. The results indicated that user PE, organization-based PO, and autonomous motivation all had significant direct/indirect positive effects on KSI and KSB as we hypothesized. Surprisingly, knowledge-based PO had a significant positive effect on KSI, which contradicted our original hypothesis. The implications for theory and for practice, limitations, and future research directions are discussed accordingly.

How Does Leader Empowering Behavior Promote Employee Knowledge Sharing? The Perspective of Self-Determination Theory

Although scholars have recognized the important role of leader empowering behavior in promoting employee knowledge sharing, investigations on the potential underlying mechanism are still limited. To enrich studies revealing the possible underlying paths, drawing on self-determination theory, this paper proposes a moderated mediation model. We propose that employee self-determination plays a mediating role and employee proactivity moderates the mediating effect. We test our hypotheses based on data collected from 230 employees across a three-wave study. The empirical results demonstrate that leader empowering behavior promotes employee knowledge sharing by enhancing employee self-determination. Employees’ proactive personality moderates the indirect effect such that the indirect effect is stronger when employees have high levels of proactive personality. This paper thus contributes to the related literature and reveals practical implications.

Proactive Personality and Employee Creativity: A Moderated Mediation Model of Multisource Information Exchange and LMX

Integrating the social perspective of creativity and the goal-regulatory process perspective of proactivity, this study investigates how proactive personality influences two forms of employee creativity-incremental creativity and radical creativity through multisource information exchange. Using a moderated mediation framework, this study suggests that leader-member exchange (LMX) moderates the positive association between proactive personality and those two forms of employee creativity. The results of this study, drawn from the sample of 500 employees and their immediate supervisors in a large state-owned company of China, support most of the hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings, as well as the limitations of this study and the directions for future research, are discussed.

Human resource management practices in creating a committed workforce for fostering knowledge transfer: a theoretical framework

Purpose

This paper aims to review existing literature on the role of human resource management (HRM) practices in nurturing employee’s organisational commitment (OC), which subsequently promoting knowledge transfer (KT) within an organisation and propose a conceptual framework for future empirical research.

Design/methodology/approach

An extensive review of existing literature was undertaken in an attempt to build the conceptual model for KT.

Findings

The proposed conceptual framework illustrates the role of OC as a focal mediating mechanism in fostering KT. This paper identifies “high commitment” HRM (HCHRM) (e.g. staffing, job design, training and development, performance appraisal and reward system) as the factors influencing the development of OC, which subsequently affecting KT (i.e. knowledge sharing and application). Also, this paper integrates the potential moderating roles of leader-member exchange (LMX) between HCHRM practices-OC, as well as information and communication technology support in the OC-KT linkage into the proposed framework.

Research limitations/implications

This paper presents a comprehensive view of fostering KT. However, the major limitation of this paper is that it remains at a conceptual level. Further empirical investigations would be helpful to test propositions, hence validating the proposed conceptual framework.

Practical implications

The proposed conceptual framework could serve as practical guidance for managers and/or practitioners in developing policies that will facilitate KT in business organisations.

Originality/value

While KT is often viewed as a single phenomenon, this paper considers the KT into two components (i.e, sharing and application) in accordance with the practice-based perspective on knowledge and behavioural approach to KT. In addition, the adoption of the general workplace commitment model in conceptualising KT could further validate its applicability in knowledge management research. Also, the integration of LMX as a moderator in the proposed framework could contribute to the scant research on LMX-related moderation models upon validation.

Locus of Control and Leader-Member Exchange: A Dimensional, Contextualized, and Prospective Analysis

Since the relationship between leaders and subordinates has important implications for organizations, exploring how high-quality leader–member exchange (LMX) relationships develop over time is a critical research objective. However, LMX research has essentially focused on leader-centric approaches to describe how leaders develop differential relationships with subordinates and has devoted little attention to the influence of subordinate characteristics. This study contends that subordinates’ individual differences may act as drivers of LMX relationships. Specifically, we posited that individuals with an internal work locus of control, owing to their sense of control over the work environment, are more prone to develop high LMX relationships over time. Moreover, we expected this effect to be enhanced when these individuals are given clear expectations about their work role because such conditions would ease their sense of agency. Further, we suggested that these effects may partly depend on the dimension of LMX (i.e., affect, loyalty, contribution, and professional respect) under consideration. We argued that the effect of internal work locus of control would generalize to all LMX dimensions but that its interaction with role clarity would primarily impact the loyalty and contribution dimensions of LMX as their behavioral orientation would result in valued outcomes for internals. Data were collected through questionnaires among a sample of 424 employees working in various industries. Through a two-wave study and controlling for the autoregressive effects of LMX, subordinates’ internal work locus of control was found to enhance LMX relationships over time. Using a multidimensional approach to LMX, our results further show that the effect of internal work locus of control generalized to all dimensions of LMX. Using a contextualized view of the development of LMX, we also found that role clarity moderated the positive relationship between internal work locus of control and LMX over time such that the relationship was stronger when role clarity was high. However, from a dimensional perspective, role clarity only accentuated the relationship between work locus of control and LMX’s loyalty dimension. The implications of these findings for LMX research are discussed.

Combining Associations Between Emotional Intelligence, Work Motivation, and Organizational Justice With Counterproductive Work Behavior: A Profile Analysis via Multidimensional Scaling (PAMS) Approach

The need for better incorporation of the construct emotional intelligence (EI) into counterproductive work behavior (CWB) research may be achieved via a unified conceptual framework. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to use the Profile Analysis via Multidimensional Scaling (PAMS) approach, and a conceptual framework that unifies motivational process with antecedents and outcomes, to assess differences in EI concerning a variety of constructs: organizational justice, CWB, emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, and intrinsic motivation. Employing established scales within a framework unifying CWB, intrinsic motivation, EI, organizational justice, and outcome constructs, two EI-based profiles displayed associations with CWB based on responses from 3,293 employees. Both the first core profile, high overall justice and low emotional intelligence, and the second core profile, high emotional intelligence and low work motivation, displayed associations with interpersonal deviance and organizational deviance, as well as emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. The results are discussed with respect to possible underlying theory and an overarching unified motivation framework that incorporates goal choice, intrinsic motivation, antecedents, and outcomes. We also provide directions for future research and implications for managers in the workplace based on heuristic conceptual frameworks that combine multiple motivational perspectives into a unified model.