Status distance and employee innovation: the roles of knowledge sharing and psychological safety in South Korean high-tech firms

This study examines how status distance affects employees’ innovation through knowledge sharing and investigates psychological safety as a boundary condition. Using data from South Korean high-tech firms, we find that greater status distance reduces knowledge sharing, which in turn undermines employee innovation. Importantly, psychological safety moderates this process: when psychological safety is high, lower status distance facilitates knowledge sharing, whereas higher status distance constrains it; in contrast, when psychological safety is low, knowledge sharing remains uniformly low regardless of status distance. These findings suggest that knowledge sharing is most effectively fostered when low status distance is combined with high psychological safety, which in turn increases innovation.