Research On The Relationship Between Transformational Leadership And Knowledge Sharing:The Mediating Roles Of Justice And Trust

Knowledge is a necessary intangible asset for any organization.It is a crucial resource to build a sustainable competitive advantage in a competitive and dynamic environment;as a result,the management of available knowledge resources becomes extremely important for every organization.The competitive advantage of an organization increasingly depends on the success of knowledge management.Knowledge sharing is a key component of knowledge management that not only opens opportunities to maximize the firm‘s ability in managing available knowledge resources,but also produces effective solutions for attaining a competitive advantage.Knowledge sharing provides essential skills and knowledge for individuals to work or get goals more efficiently.Therefore,identification of factors that helps directors/leaders create a knowledge sharing culture and encourage knowledge sharing activities among employees in an organization are very necessary.Prior researches highlight that leadership and employees are the key factor in the knowledge sharing process of an organization.Besides,employees‘ motivation and willingness to participate in sharing knowledge crucially affect the success of an organization‘s knowledge management and firm effectiveness.Thus changing employee attitudes and behaviors toward knowledge sharing is likely to be one of the most effective strategies for enhancing knowledge sharing activities.Even though,according to the author‘s knowledge,research on the relationship between the factors relating to employees‘ motivation and willingness(such as employees trust and justice)and knowledge sharing is stillsparse and limited.Consequently,this study aims to clarify the mechanism and the influences of transformational leadership,aspects of organizational justice(distributive justice and procedural justice)and aspects of trust(trust in leadership and trust among employees at two version: disclosure-based trust and reliance-based trust)on two types of knowledge sharing behavior(knowledge donating and knowledge collecting)after assessing the control role of individuals‘ demographic characteristics such as: work experience,level of education,and gender.Analysis of Moment Structures(AMOS)with Structural Equations Modeling(SEM)was employed for measurement validation and for testing the structural model based on the data gathered from more than709 respondents in manufacturing and service firms in two different contexts(Vietnamese firms and Chinese firms).Data analysis was conductedusing SPSS and AMOS version 21.Confirmatory factor analysis(CFA)was used to examine the validity and reliability of the constructs.The results show that transformational leadership can be one of the most appropriate leadership styles that has significantly influences on organizational justice,employee trust,and knowledge sharing behaviors.The findings confirmed the mediating role of trust between aspects of justice and knowledge sharing.The findings also indicated that,organizational justice and aspect of employee trust(trust in leadership,and trust among employees)server as the mediators between transformational leadership and knowledge sharing behaviors.More specifically,transformational leadership,procedural justice,disclosure-based trust in a leader,and disclosure-based trust among membershave more significant effects on knowledge collecting,while distributive justice,disclosure-based trust in a leaderand disclosure-based trust among employee have more significant effects on knowledge donating.The finding indicates that strengthening transformational leadership practice by impacting the followers‘ positive perception of the leader‘s characters(such as considering employees as the firm‘s valuable resource,building emotional and ethical links with followers,inspiring them to higher values,emphasis the important role of emotions,values and the role of ethics),will not only create the justice in organization but also establish the employees‘ trust in leaders and employees‘ trust in each other,through which employees will voluntarily and actively share their personal intellectual capital with colleagues for the benefit and common development of the organization.The two specific innovations of this dissertation are as follows:(1)From a practical perspective,the study brings more deeply understanding for directors/managers about the necessary factors to encourage and promote knowledge sharing behavior in the organization.The findings of this study highlight the important role of transformational leadership style practice to create and maintain the fairness in the organization,to build trust among employees as well as the employee trust in leadership,and to foster the sharing knowledge,skills,and expertise of employees.In other way,this study provides a better understanding of the causal correlations among transformational leadership,aspects of justice(distributive justice and procedural justice),aspects of employee trust(trust in leaders and trust among members),and knowledge sharing behaviors.This study,therefore,has value to directors/managers in both Vietnames firms and Chinese firms as a reference for transformational leadership-style practices,building employee trust,organizational justice and fostering knowledge sharing activities in their firms.(2)The hypotheses developed in this study help to fill the theoretical gaps and make important contributions to both practical and theoretical initiatives on organizational behavior and knowledge sharing in the field of knowledge management.More specifically,by assessing the influences of transformational leadership,aspect of justice(distributive justice and procedural justice),and aspect of employee trust(trust in leaders and trust among members)on two aspects of knowledge sharing behavior,i.e.,knowledge collecting and knowledge donating,this study makes substantial contributions to the development of knowledge management initiatives.As knowledge collecting and knowledge donating reflect two different types of behavioral tendencies in knowledge sharing by individuals: ―willing to share in an active way without conditions‖ and ―willing to share when others ask for the purpose of collecting‖.The distinction between knowledge collecting and knowledge donating is important in determining how to increase knowledge sharing efficiency.