Ethical Leadership and Knowledge Sharing: The Effects of Positive Reciprocity and Moral Efficacy

Xiaofeng Su,Jingjing Wu,Xiaoli Jiang,Wenhe Lin,Qiuqin Zheng,Xiaoxia Chen

doi:10.1177/21582440211021823

Xiaofeng Su, Jingjing Wu + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211021823

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Abstract

Despite the pivotal function of knowledge sharing for enterprises in today’s highly competitive and ever-changing economic environment, the mechanism about how ethical leadership impacts employees’ knowledge sharing remains a largely unexplored domain in the literature. Drawing on the social exchange theory and social learning theory, this study examines how ethical leadership helps to encourage followers’ knowledge sharing behavior considering the dual-mediating effects of positive reciprocity and moral efficacy. A questionnaire-based survey is used to collect data in China. And structural equation modeling techniques are used to analyze the collected data in order to test the proposed hypothesis. Results show that ethical leadership has positive impact on followers’ knowledge sharing. It is also found that both positive reciprocity and moral efficacy play significant mediating effects, and they are equally important in accounting for the impact of ethical leadership on followers’ knowledge sharing. Based on the analysis results, this paper further discusses theoretical and practical implications.

Highlights

Knowledge, as an important organizational resource, can provide sustainable competitive advantage for enterprises in today’s highly competitive and ever-changing economic environment
The results showed that cross-loading of item 1 of the positive reciprocity scale exceeded the standard recommendation value of 0.40
Bootstrap resampling technique was used to test whether the mediating effects of positive reciprocity commitment and moral efficacy are significant

Summary

Introduction

As an important organizational resource, can provide sustainable competitive advantage for enterprises in today’s highly competitive and ever-changing economic environment. Knowledge acquisition requires a lot of time and effort, whereas knowledge sharing makes knowledge lose its original value or unique privilege once shared with others (Xia & Yang, 2020; Park et al, 2017). It usually presents a moral dilemma for organizational members to decide whether to share knowledge for the collective welfare or hide knowledge for intensifying personal competitive advantages. In the context of knowledge-based enterprises, organizational innovation and productivity requires the members to actively participate in the activities of knowledge sharing. It is necessary to explore the antecedents of employees’ knowledge sharing

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