Leading Knowledge Sharing in Organizations

Abstract: Innovational leadership is a set of practices and skills that leaders develop to promote innovative behaviors in their workers at the individual and collective levels. This concept is novel and focuses on one role of leaders: the facilitation of generating new or significantly improved products and services. Knowledge sharing is the exchange of knowledge among individuals. In an organizational context, knowledge sharing is the foundation for generating innovations. Knowledge sharing is a fundamental process that helps employees contribute their skills and experience to creative and organizational value dynamics. Self-efficacy is an individual´s confidence in their abilities to execute a particular task. It influences learning and performance. This research was the first to study the influence of innovational leadership on knowledge sharing. The sample consisted of 415 workers from different sectors in Colombia. According to the results, innovational leadership positively influenced tacit and explicit knowledge, although the effect on tacit knowledge was higher than on explicit. Self-efficacy was a mediator in the relationship between innovational leadership and knowledge sharing. Additional research is suggested to understand why innovational leadership affects more tacit than explicit knowledge.