Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine whether and to what extent knowledge-oriented leadership (KOL) is associated with knowledge sharing (KS) in an organization as well as the dimensions of this leadership style. Design/methodology/approach Opinion-based questionnaires were applied in the study. A principal axis factor analysis was conducted to find the main factors in KOL (n=236). The relationship between KS and KOL was tested with Pearson’s correlation coefficient method. Findings The findings support the importance of high-quality leader–member exchange for KS because KOL had a strong significant positive association with the extent of KS in the organization (n=96, r=0.521). The principal axis factor suggested three factors, all of which were moderately significantly related to KS: the perceived support from the superior, enough time for KS and information flow from the superior. Research limitations/implications The research design in this study was cross-sectional. Thus, the interpretations of the cause–effect relationship among the variables could not be determined. Furthermore, the findings should be confirmed using a larger sample. Practical implications The study indicates that if innovativeness and the use of human capital are important for an organization’s competitive ability, it is vital to train managers to be able to apply KOL. Originality/value Few studies have addressed the relationship between leadership and KS. Hence, this study contributes to a better understanding of the relation between KS and KOL style. Additionally, KOL is probably a multidimensional construct, but little empirical work has been done to explore it.

Purpose Knowledge sharing becomes crucial in today’s competitive world to foster organizational performance. This paper aims to explore which employee characteristics facilitate knowledge sharing in the organizations and to examine the dimensions of these characteristics. Design/methodology/approach Opinion-based questionnaires among employees in Czech companies were applied. The research design in this study was cross-sectional. The hypotheses were tested by Pearson’s correlations and regression analyses. Findings The findings support the idea that specific individual employee characteristics increase knowledge sharing in the organization. Four categories of potentially appropriate employee individual characteristics were suggested: social and communication skills; positive work feelings; competences for problem-solving; and employee’s self-efficacy. However, only employee’s positive work feelings and self-efficacy significantly predicted the extent of knowledge sharing in the organization. Practical implications The findings offer a basis for future research. The results of the study can be used in recruiting new employees and managerial decision-making. The recruitment methods and the selection methods deployed should enable the firm to attract those whose values are in harmony with the organization’s values. Managers should build a work environment that promotes greater and more trusting ties among employees via organizing social activities for employees, a supervisor’s acceptance of an employee’s autonomy and responsibility and increasing employees’ confidence in their abilities. Originality/value This is one of the first studies to investigate dimensions of employee knowledge-oriented characteristics. It supports the idea that some individual employee characteristics boost spontaneous knowledge sharing behaviour.

The contemporary management is often faced with the fact that in theory accepted basis are not in managerial practice fully followed. As an example, could be stated the understanding of the company as a system. In theory, an enterprise is defined as a relatively isolated system, but the practice often does not respect this fact and allows the company to act as an absolutely isolated system. Therefore, we encounter new concepts shareholder management and stakeholder management, which draw attention to this contradiction. If the practice does not respect the theoretical findings, management ceases to fulfil its strategic objective and creates a path to consumer thinking and consumer society. The ongoing economic crisis confirms these findings and highlights one of the main reasons which could be considered as lack of ethics in management. The aim of this paper is to inspire the reader to reflect on the possible changes of management philosophy.

Business schools, and universities providing business education, from across the globe have increasingly engaged in responsible management education (RME), that is in embedding social, environmental and ethical topics in their teaching and research. However, we still do not fully understand the institutional pressures that have led to the adoption of RME, in particular concerning under‐researched regions like Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Hence, we undertook what is to our knowledge the most comprehensive study into the adoption of RME in CEE to date (including 13 countries: Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia and Ukraine). We find that, with regard to RME, isomorphic pressures seem to shape teaching and research in different ways, which suggests that the idea of a holistic approach to RME, promoted by, for example, the Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME), needs to be revisited; rather, different trajectories of organizational engagement may emerge for each principle. As a contribution to institutional theory, we discuss how a highly fragmented organizational field—like RME with its multiple dimensions—impacts on notions of actor centrality, where actors achieve centrality with regard to some dimensions of the field but fail to do so for others. In particular, we found that the European Union holds centrality in the area of RME teaching, but not in RME research. Our findings thus suggest that the concept of field centrality needs further clarification.