| The competitiveness of an organization greatly depends on the effectiveness of its knowledge management (Riege, 2005); the success of its knowledge management largely relies upon employees’ motivation and willingness to engage in knowledge sharing (Gagné, ۲۰۰۹; Gibbert & Krause, 2002). Knowledge sharing, defined as “the act of making knowledge available to others within the organization” (Ipe, 2003, p. 32), has been found to be crucial for achieving effectiveness and greater innovation at the individual level (e.g., Huang, Hsieh, & He, 2014; Kim & Lee, 2013), team level (e.g., Gardner, Gino, & Staats, 2012; Gong, Kim, Lee, & Zhu, 2013; Srivastava, Bartol, & Locke, 2006), and organizational level (e.g., Andreeva & Kianto, 2012; Tsai, 2001). Not only is knowledge sharing essential for individuals and/or firms to pursue better performance, it has also been increasingly recognized as a moral challenge in organizations (e.g., Gentile, 1998; Jarvenpaa & Staples, 2001; Styhre, 2002; Van den Hooff & de Leeuw van Weenen, 2004; Wang, 2004). Lin (2007) has argued that employees’ refusal to share knowledge with coworkers threatens the fundamental interests of an organization, such as its survival and competitiveness in the market, and hence might be considered a violation of the moral norm in organizations. Given the practical importance of knowledge sharing, it is essential for researchers to investigate the factors that influence employees’ willingness and motivation to engage in knowledge sharing with coworkers (Bock, Zmud, Kim, & Lee, 2005). To date, research on knowledge sharing generally follows the social capital approach to investigate the potential antecedents of knowledge sharing (e.g., Burt, 1992; Cross & Cummings, 2004; Hu & Randel, 2014; Inkpen & Tsang, 2005). While this line of research has contributed to our understanding of the important roles that contextual factors and organizational cues play in engendering effective knowledge sharing, this literature is still limited in several ways. First, little to no research has investigated the effects of leadership on employees’ knowledge sharing, despite the important roles leaders play in determining subordinates’ behavior at work. Srivastava et al. (2006) have specifically argued for the importance of empowering leadership in followers’ knowledge sharing. However, the mechanisms linking leadership styles and knowledge sharing still remain unexplored. Second, while the majority of prior research has taken the social capital perspective to study knowledge sharing, little research has taken a moral lens to examine how leaders’ ethicality shapes employees’ knowledge sharing behavior, even though knowledge sharing behavior has moral relevance. As we elaborate below, it is theoretically plausible that ethical leadership might be an important predictor of employees’ knowledge sharing behavior. Brown, Treviño, and Harrison (2005) define ethical leadership as “the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement, and decision-making” (p. 120). There are two major pillars to ethical leadership: a leader must be a moral person (demonstrating moral characteristics and traits in his/her behavior as a role model) and a moral manager (actively promoting moral principles through two-way and open communication, rewards, and punishment). Extant research has consistently shown that ethical leadership nurtures positive and morally desirable behavior among employees (e.g., Huang & Paterson, 2014; Kacmar, Bachrach, Harris, & Zivnuska, 2011; Liu, Kwan, Fu, & Mao, 2013; Newman, Kiazad, Miao, & Cooper, 2014; Wang & Sung, 2016). Third, to the extent that ethical leadership might predict employees’ knowledge sharing behavior, we do not know whether the two sub-dimensions of ethical leadership, namely that the leader is a moral person and moral manager, play different roles in motivating employees to engage in knowledge sharing. In short, we do not know whether the effects of these two pillars of ethical leadership on followers’ behavior (e.g., knowledge sharing) are channeled through different mechanisms. |
