The Empirical Study Of Effects Of Knowledge Leadership On Employee Creativity

With the rapid development of science and technology and the increasingly global competition,innovation has gradually become the key to the survival and development of an organization.Employee creativity is the foundation and source of organization innovation,and leadership style is an important factor that affects employee creativity.Knowledge leadership is a new leadership style in the era of knowledge economy.Knowledge leadership has the characteristics of openness,tolerance of mistakes,encouragement of innovation and so on.Knowledge leadership plays a key role in knowledge worker management and knowledge management.At present,there are few empirical research about knowledge leadership.The empirical study of its influence on employee creativity is even less.So the purpose of this study is to explore the mechanism how knowledge leadership affects employee creativity,mediated by external knowledge sourcing and moderated by absorptive capacity.This paper firstly sorted out the existing literature of knowledge leadership,external knowledge sourcing,absorptive capacity and employee creativity,and formed the research framework based on the social learning theory,knowledge-based theory and open innovation theory.Secondly,this paper focused on the effect of how knowledge leadership influenced employee creativity,the mediation of external knowledge sourcing and the moderation of absorptive capacity.And then we put forward the hypotheses and research model.Thirdly,this paper use the mature scale at home and abroad after revising to form a formal questionnaire.Finally,the tests of the reliability,validity,correlation and hierarchical regression had been used to validate the hypotheses.Research result shows that various individual and enterprise factors differently affect on knowledge leadership,external knowledge sourcing,absorptive capacity and employee creativity.Knowledge leadership has significantly positive effect on employee creativity.External knowledge sourcing partially mediates the influences between knowledge leadership on employee creativity.Absorptive capacity has a moderating effect on external knowledge sourcing and employee creativity,which strengthens the positive effect of external knowledge sourcing on employee creativity.Based on the conclusions above,this paper reveals the mechanism of knowledge leadership on employee creativity,and it also expands empirical study of knowledge leadership.According to the results of empirical research,the paper puts forwardseveral managerial suggestions in emphasizing the appropriate method of knowledge leadership,focusing on improving external knowledge sourcing,and improving employee absorptive capacity.