Strategic Leadership and Competitive Advantage in Islamic Banking: The Mediating Role of Knowledge Sharing in Iraq

This study examines how strategic leadership enhances competitive advantage in Iraqi Islamic banks through the mediating role of knowledge sharing. Iraqi Islamic banks provide a distinctive research setting because they operate under both conventional competitive pressures and Sharia-compliance requirements, which constrain certain financial practices and require managers to balance regulatory, ethical, and market considerations. This context is particularly relevant for examining how leadership capabilities and knowledge-sharing mechanisms contribute to competitive advantage. Strategic leadership is conceptualized through three dimensions: decision-making, flexibility and adaptability, and team empowerment. Using a quantitative cross-sectional design, data were collected from senior managers, supervisors, and employees working in 20 major Islamic banks in Baghdad. Of 530 distributed questionnaires, 485 valid responses were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results show that strategic leadership has a significant positive effect on competitive advantage (β = 0.374, p < 0.001) and knowledge sharing (β = 0.745, p < 0.001), while knowledge sharing significantly enhances competitive advantage (β = 0.392, p < 0.001). The indirect effect of strategic leadership on competitive advantage through knowledge sharing is also significant (β = 0.292, p < 0.001), indicating partial mediation. These findings demonstrate that strategic leadership contributes to competitive advantage not only directly but also by creating an organizational environment that facilitates knowledge exchange. Practically, the findings suggest that managers of Islamic banks should strengthen participative decision-making, employee empowerment, organizational adaptability, and knowledge-sharing practices to improve competitive performance. The study contributes to the strategic leadership and knowledge management literature by providing empirical evidence from an underexplored Iraqi Islamic banking context and by clarifying the mechanism through which knowledge sharing translates leadership capabilities into competitive advantage.