Respectful leadership and followers’ knowledge sharing: A social mindfulness lens

Abstract

Knowledge sharing is a discretionary act of employees who might see benefits in keeping their knowledge to themselves. We focus on the other-oriented nature of knowledge sharing to outline how respectful leadership as an other-oriented leadership style can enhance followers’ knowledge sharing through its effect on followers’ other-orientedness. Specifically, we propose that respectful leaders increase followers’ social mindfulness—defined as the cognitive (i.e. perspective taking) and affective (i.e. empathic concern) willingness to behave in a way that increases others’ opportunities—which facilitates knowledge sharing. To test our conceptual model, we conducted a three-wave field study with 275 followers, and a multi-source field study with 83 leader-follower dyads. In line with our hypotheses, followers’ perspective taking (Study 1 and 2) and empathic concern (Study 1) mediated the positive effect of respectful leadership on followers’ knowledge sharing. Moreover, perspective taking and empathic concern possessed interactive effects in Study 1, suggesting that the relationship between respectful leadership and followers’ knowledge sharing was strongest when both components of social mindfulness were high. We discuss theoretical implications of the identified motivational pathway and elaborate on implications for practitioners who aim to facilitate knowledge sharing at work.

Leader Humility and Knowledge Sharing Intention: A Serial Mediation Model

“…Social exchange theory could be used to explain the influence of leadership and trust play in encouraging employees to share knowledge (Navimipour and Charband, 2016;Gagné et al, 2019). There is a scarcity of research uncovering the mechanisms showing how leadership behaviors influence knowledge sharing (Wang and Noe, 2010;Gerpott et al, 2019). Leaders who exhibit humility behaviors can motivate their employees to engage in positive behaviors (Owens and Hekman, 2016).…”

Unraveling the Effects of Ethical Leadership on Knowledge Sharing: The Mediating Roles of Subjective Well-Being and Social Media in the Hotel Industry

“…Scholars have recently explored leadership as a tool to address this challenge and to facilitate knowledge sharing in organizations. The existing literature has provided initial evidence that different leadership styles, such as transformational, empowering, and respectful leadership, can facilitate knowledge sharing [1,3,4]. However, the mechanisms through which leaders affect knowledge sharing at an individual level still have not been explored [5].…”

The Enactment of Knowledge Sharing: The Roles of Psychological Availability and Team Psychological Safety Climate

“…Considering the benefits of knowledge sharing for colleagues and teams as well as its potential costs to sharers, scholars have explored various factors that foster employees' knowledge sharing from different perspectives (Wang and Noe, 2010). In particular, leaders' behaviors, such as the empowerment of leadership (Srivastava et al, 2006), ethical leadership (Bavik et al, 2018), and respectful leadership (Gerpott et al, 2020), have been highlighted as important factors in facilitating employee knowledge sharing. In this vein, coaching behavior, which refers to a one-on-one process of guiding and encouraging employees to maximize their career potential and improve their work performance (Redshaw, 2000), may also play a significant role in the knowledge sharing process.…”