Leading through Mutual Knowledge Creation: Leader’s Role in a Multi-Team Project

Abstract

This paper reports on a field study, examining on the effect of top- and mid-level managers’ role in knowledge sharing in a multi-team engineering project, composed of twelve teams. The study highlights the distinctive role of mid-level managers in knowledge sharing, and how top-level managers can encourage mid-level managers’ spontaneous knowledge sharing through creating mutual knowledge across teams. In particular, findings suggested that through continuously using formal interventions (which are labeled ‘templates’ in the current study), top-level managers can positively foster knowledge sharing by effectively switching mid-level managers’ focus onto creating mutual knowledge.