Portsmouth Business School

Thesis summary

As leadership is recognised as a critical success factor for effective knowledge sharing (KS) over organisational operations, leadership practices can have a direct impact on knowledge sharing behaviours (KSBs).  Employees’ willingness to share knowledge is the key in organisational efforts to promote KSBs. This highlights a need for leaders to be fully aware of their roles in promoting KS activities that can generate and support employee readiness to share knowledge, hence, develop competitive advantage for the organisation. This paper explores leader engagement as a means to enhance understanding of its impact on KSBs. In a knowledge-based economy, KS in higher education (HE) is undoubtedly important. A study focusing on the impact of leadership practice on research activities in UK HE has therefore been chosen. This paper explores how leaders engage with KS policies and practices (KSPPs) can promote both tacit and explicit KSBs in the perspective of research activities among academic staff. This paper sets out a theoretical framework for leader engagement highlighting KSPPs, using four indicative categories: people, organisational, initiative, and technological factors. The relative impacts of each factor on KSBs are examined. Significantly, results may be used to guide practice in HE and other knowledge-intensive environments that is important to foster a culture of innovation.

Key words: Leader engagement; knowledge sharing policies; knowledge sharing behaviour, higher education.