The Impact of Leadership Style on Knowledge-Sharing Intentions in China

Knowledge management (KM) is a dominant theme in the behavior of contemporary organizations. While KM has been extensively studied in developed economies, it is much less well understood in developing economies—notably, those that are characterized by different social and cultural traditions to the mainstream of Western societies; this is the case in China. In this article, we develop and test a theoretical model that explains the impact of leadership style and interpersonal trust on the intention of information and knowledge workers in China to share their knowledge with their peers. All the hypotheses are supported, showing that both initiating structure and consideration have a significant effect on employees’ intention to share knowledge through trust building: 28.2% of the variance in employees’ intention to share knowledge is explained. We discuss the theoretical contributions of the article, identify future research opportunities and highlight the implications for practicing managers.