Knowledge Sharing and Innovative Work Behaviour in Healthcare: A Micro‐Level Investigation of Direct and Indirect Effects

Abstract

This study presents a micro‐level investigation that provides new insights into how employees' knowledge sharing affects their own innovative work behaviours (IWBs). Our study posited three mechanisms linking an individual's knowledge sharing behaviours to his or her own IWBs: (i) a direct effect whereby the act of sharing elicits a recombination and translation of knowledge that facilitates innovation; (ii) an indirect effect whereby knowledge sharing creates social conditions (i.e., reciprocation with new knowledge) for innovation; (iii) a distal effect whereby the antecedents of knowledge sharing also promote innovation. We tested these hypotheses on 155 employees in four palliative care organizations. Our results provide original evidence that employees who share knowledge also engage more in creating, promoting and implementing innovations. This study reveals a direct, unmediated link between knowledge sharing behaviours and IWBs. Our evidence suggests that it is the act of knowledge recombination and translation embedded in knowledge sharing that exerts the most positive effect on IWBs. We discuss how this result indicates that sharing knowledge ignites transformation and exploitation capabilities that help sharers innovate their own work practices.

Modelling Course-Design Characteristics, Self-Regulated Learning and the Mediating Effect of Knowledge-Sharing Behavior as Drivers of Individual Innovative Behavior

“…The present study confirms the findings of Radaelli, Lettieri, Mura, and Spiller (2014), who posited that idea promotion is enabled by knowledge-sharing behaviour. While the sharing of best practices in the research by the latter authors promoted idea generation among healthcare professionals in hospice and palliative care organisation, this has now also been confirmed in the context of technology students in higher education.…”

Examining Structural Relationships between Work Engagement, Organizational Procedural Justice, Knowledge Sharing, and Innovative Work Behavior for Sustainable Organizations

“…In addition, research has found that employee's knowledge sharing has a significant and positive influence on their innovative work behavior [29,48,49]. Radaelli et al [29] explained that when employees share their knowledge, they are more likely to elaborate, integrate, and translate information rather than simply passing on information to recipients.…”

“…Radaelli et al [29] explained that when employees share their knowledge, they are more likely to elaborate, integrate, and translate information rather than simply passing on information to recipients. This exercise promotes employee involvement in innovative work behavior, including searching for opportunities for change and applying new ideas to existing organizational practices.…”

“…Regarding the mediating effects of work engagement on the relationships among organizational procedural justice, knowledge sharing, and innovative work behavior, the existing literature [3,24,[28][29][30]52] indicates that if organizations seriously care about fairness in the decision-making process, their efforts will facilitate and support employee work engagement. The support given to employee work engagement, in turn, increases the willingness of employees to share their work-related knowledge with other organizational members and/or actively suggest new ideas for their organization and transform the new ideas into applications by obtaining peer or managerial support (i.e., innovative work behavior).…”

“…Although the four research constructs (i.e., work engagement, organizational procedural justice, knowledge sharing, and innovative work behavior) are relevant to organizational sustainability and some previous research [27][28][29][30][31] has partially examined the relationships among them, there seems to be a lack of research that comprehensively and simultaneously investigates the relationships between them [14]. Therefore, the current study primarily aims to comprehensively examine employee work engagement and its structural relationships with organizational procedural justice, employee knowledge sharing, and employee innovative work behavior as they relate to the human dimension of organizational sustainability.…”