Which Leadership Behavior Promotes Knowledge Sharing Better?Evidence from a Meta-Analysis
In the era of knowledge economy,organizational performance increasingly hinges on the knowledge possessed by the organization and its capabilities in knowledge management.As a core component of knowledge management,knowledge sharing facilitates organizations in exploring and utilizing their knowledge resources,serving as a crucial source for gaining a competitive advantage.Despite the significant value of knowledge sharing for organizations,it does not happen naturally.Knowledge is ingrained in individual employees,who may hesitate to share it with others due to concerns about jeopardizing their power and status.Consequently,promoting knowledge sharing among employees has become a common concern for both researchers and practitioners.Additionally,knowledge sharing constitutes an interpersonal interaction process in which employees have a choice,significantly influenced by leadership behavior.Scholars have explored numerous types of leadership,such as transformational leadership,transactional leadership,ethical leadership,servant leadership,destructive leadership,responsible leadership,empowering leadership,and authentic leadership,investigating their effects on knowledge sharing.Despite the richness of existing research on the relationship between leadership behavior and knowledge sharing,several key questions remain unan-swered.First,inconsistent research conclusions exist regarding the strength and direction of the effects of leadership behaviors on knowledge sharing.Answering this question is crucial for unveiling straightforward and genuine relationships among variables,establishing the groundwork for theory development,and assisting practicing managers in understanding accurately how their leadership behaviors influence knowledge sharing.Second,it remains unclear which type of leadership behavior is more conducive to promoting knowledge sharing.Identifying leadership behaviors that more effectively promote knowledge sharing will enhance understanding of leadership effectiveness and provide practitioners with guidance in prioritizing and shaping behaviors that facilitate knowledge sharing,particularly in resource-constrained organizational contexts.Third,the boundary conditions of the relationship between leadership behavior and knowledge sharing have not been fully explored,and whether there are differences in this rela-tionship between Eastern and Western cultures or across industries is not yet clear.The response to this inquiry will enhance understanding of the relationship's boundary conditions and help managers tailor their management strategies to foster knowledge sharing.This study categorizes leadership behavior into four categories:relationship-oriented,task-oriented,change-oriented,and destructive-oriented.The first three categories represent constructive leadership behavior.Drawing on self-determination theory and employing meta-analytic techniques,this study investigates the relationship between different types of leadership behavior and knowledge sharing,as well as the influencing factors of this relationship.The main findings are as follows:(1)Change-oriented,task-oriented,and relationship-oriented leadership behaviors are positively cor-related with knowledge sharing,while destructive-oriented leadership behavior is negatively correlated,with the correlation decreasing sequentially.(2)Compared to constructive leadership behavior,destructive leadership behavior has limited explanatory power for knowledge sharing.(3)In the context of mainland China,the correlation between change-oriented leadership behavior and knowledge sharing is higher than in Western contexts.(4)Compared to the service industry and high-tech industry,the correlation between constructive leadership behavior and knowledge sharing is higher in the manufacturing industry,and the negative correlation between destructive leadership and knowledge sharing is lowest in the service industry.This study contributes to research on the relationship between leadership behavior and knowledge sharing in several aspects:Firstly,it clarifies the strength and direction of the relationship between different types of leadership behavior and knowledge sharing.By utilizing meta-analytic tech-niques,this study integrates inconsistent research conclusions from cross-context and large-sample studies,providing more reliable and robust effect size estimates for subsequent research on leadership behavior and knowledge sharing.Secondly,it reveals the relative effectiveness of different types of leadership behavior in explaining knowledge sharing.Whereas previous studies mostly independently investigated the relationship between a specific type of leadership behavior and knowledge sharing,this study integrates different types of leadership behavior into the same framework and compares their relative effectiveness in explaining knowledge sharing through relative weight comparison analysis,providing further guidance for the selection of antecedents of knowledge sharing,especially leadership behavior.Thirdly,it enriches the boundary conditions of the influence of lead-ership behavior on knowledge sharing.Previous studies mainly focused on the moderating effects of employee characteristics(such as proactive per-sonality,goal orientation,etc.)and organizational situational factors(such as organizational support,etc.),while this study verifies the differences in the relationship between leadership behavior and knowledge sharing between Eastern and Western cultures and across industries using meta-analytic techniques,providing references for considering boundary conditions in subsequent research.Regarding the promotion of employee knowledge sharing behavior by organizations,this study provides valuable insights:Firstly,the study finds that positive leadership behavior is positively correlated with knowledge sharing,suggesting that managers should focus on adopting positive leadership behaviors to stimulate employee knowledge sharing,such as contingent rewards,empowerment,encouragement of innovation,etc.Secondly,destruc-tive leadership is negatively associated with knowledge sharing.This insight suggests that from a knowledge management perspective,practitioners should refrain from engaging in abusive behaviors such as humiliation towards employees to prevent any detrimental impact on their willingness to share knowledge.Thirdly,relative weight analysis finds that constructive leadership behavior(97.42％)has a much greater explanatory power for knowledge sharing than destructive leadership behavior(2.58％),suggesting that organizations should prioritize resources into training programs for constructive leadership behavior under limited resources to maximize the promotion of employee knowledge sharing.Fourthly,the study finds that change-oriented leadership behavior has the greatest explanatory power(45.19％)for knowledge sharing compared to other leadership behav-iors,suggesting that enterprises should pay more attention to selecting leaders with a change-oriented mindset and help leaders acquire learnable change-oriented leadership behavior through training,succession planning,mentorship,etc.,such as individualized consideration,intellectual stimu-lation,vision inspiration,etc.Finally,the manufacturing industry requires constructive leadership behavior more than the service industry and high-tech industry to stimulate employee knowledge sharing.Governments,industry associations,and other organizations should guide the manufacturing industry to invest resources in enhancing leadership capabilities to better promote organizational knowledge management levels.
Leadership BehaviorKnowledge SharingMeta-analysisSelf-determination Theory
万方数据
