The Effect Of Empowerment Leadership On Employee Knowledge Sharing Behavior

The arrival of the knowledge economy era and urgent needs of organizational innovation make knowledge sharing behavior of employees within the organization very important.In today's management context of flat organizational structure and knowledge workers' job autonomy,empowerment leadership has become a focused style of leadership.Knowledge workers often need more empowerment.Empowerment for knowledge workers may stimulate their positive work attitude and cooperation and sharing among themselves.In addition,the relationship between knowledge workers and the organization is very subtle.In addition to the social exchange relationship between knowledge workers and the organization,the sense of ownership which reflects employees' perception of psychological ownership to the organization has become a new perspective of employee-organization relationship in recent years.Based on the background above,this study proposed four initial research questions to be solved:(1)whether the empowerment leadership has a positive effect on knowledge-sharing behavior of employees within the organization?(2)If the effect is significant,how empowering leadership behaviors affect employee knowledge sharing?(3)Whether the impact of empowerment leadership on the two different attributes of knowledge sharing behavior(explicit knowledge sharing and implicit knowledge sharing behavior)exist different mechanisms?(4)In Chinese context,whether the supervisor-subordinate guanxi plays a moderated role between empowerment leadership and employees' psychological perception to the organization(social exchange relationship with the organization,organizational psychological ownership),together with knowledge sharing behavior.This paper conducted a literature review on main variables of knowledge sharing behavior,empowerment leadership,organizational psychology ownership and supervisor-subordinate guanxi about their proposed background,concepts,dimensions,antecedents and results,and analyzed the research status and problems.This study integrated the meaning of empowerment leadership of two different perspectives,namely "delegation" and "to enable",and presented that there may exist two different mechanisms how empowerment leadership influences individual behavior.Based on social exchange theory,social cognitive theory and self-determination theory,social exchange with the organization and organizational psychological ownership,which respectively reflects social and psychological ties between employee and organization,can be regarded as two parallel mechanisms which may explain the relationship between empowerment leadership and knowledge sharing.However,the two mechanisms are different which may manifested to explicit and implicit knowledge sharing.Social exchange with the organization reflects the employees' "controlled motivation",which is mainly derived from incentives or stimuli in the external environment,and has a greater impact on explicit knowledge sharing behavior.Due to employees' "autonomous motivation",psychological ownership reflects the spontaneous sense of responsibility and ownership to the organization,and has more effect on implicit knowledge sharing.According to this model,this study has analyzed the main effect of empowering leadership on employee knowledge sharing behavior,the mediation effects and its comparison of social exchange and psychological ownership,as well as the moderation effect of supervisor-subordinate guanxi,and proposed corresponding research hypotheses.Based on a pilot and formal survey of knowledge workers from high-tech enterprises,this study collected 559 valid samples.The research conducted descriptive statistical analysis and data quality analysis to examine the distribution of sample data,reliability and validity of variables,as well as model fit.The results of correlation analysis,structural equation modeling analysis and multivariate hierarchical regression analysis presented the conclusions:(1)empowerment leadership has a positive impact on both explicit and implicit knowledge sharing;(2)empowerment leadership exerts a positive impact on employee social exchange with the organization,social exchange plays a partially mediated role between empowering leadership and explicit and implicit knowledge sharing behavior;(3)similarly,empowerment leadership exerts a positive impact on organizational psychological ownership,psychological ownership plays a partially mediated role between empowering leadership and explicit and implicit knowledge sharing behavior;(4)compared to implicit knowledge,social exchange with the organization has a stronger positive impact on knowledge sharing;(5)compared to the explicit knowledge,organizational psychological ownership has a stronger positive effect on implicit knowledge sharing;(6)supervisor-subordinate guanxi did not play a significant moderated role between empowerment leadership and social exchange as well as organizational psychological ownership.Based on the two parallel mechanisms of social exchange with the organization and organizational psychological ownership,this study explored how empowerment leadership influences employee knowledge sharing behavior and its role boundary in Chinese context.The conclusions provided a clear description of the complex intermediation between leadership behavior and employee knowledge sharing behavior,in order to build a more complete theoretical framework.Through a comparison of the organizational psychological ownership and social exchange,the conclusions are also helpful for management practitioners to design a better leadership and management skill to promote employee knowledge sharing behavior.This paper suggested that on top of emphasizing social exchange with employees,organizations should foster employees to form a clear and positive organizational psychological ownership,because organizational psychological ownership is more helpful to promote implicit knowledge sharing.