Charismatic leadership and tacit knowledge sharing in the context of enterprise systems learning: the mediating effect of psychological safety climate and intrinsic motivation

TLDR

The study develops a theoretical model to examine how leader charisma influences tacit knowledge sharing in enterprise systems learning teams. A survey-based field study was conducted, collecting 117 valid responses from 153 distributed questionnaires across more than 20 branches of the Beidahuang Group in China. Results show that leader charisma strongly enhances psychological safety climate, which in turn boosts intrinsic motivation and tacit knowledge sharing, providing guidance for leaders to foster charisma to promote a safe climate and effective knowledge sharing.

Abstract

Drawing upon charismatic leadership and intrinsic motivation theory, we developed a theoretical model to examine the impact mechanism of leader charisma on individuals' tacit knowledge-sharing behaviour in the context of an Enterprise Systems learning team. We conducted a survey-based field study to examine the theoretical model and hypotheses. A total of 153 questionnaires were distributed to employees from more than 20 branches of the Beidahuang Group in China and 117 valid questionnaires were returned. Results from partial least squares analysis suggest that leader charisma has a strong influence on psychological safety climate, which in turn has a positive impact on individuals' intrinsic motivation and their tacit knowledge-sharing behaviour. Our research findings unpack the impact mechanism of charismatic leadership on tacit knowledge sharing, and provide guidelines for the team leader to exhibit charismatic leadership traits in order to promote a psychological safety climate and facilitate an effective knowledge sharing of enterprise systems.