Leadership Research Summary:
- The aim of this study was to investigate the associations among ethical leadership, group identification, relational identification, organizational identification, and knowledge sharing. This study conducted a survey in Taiwan to collect the data. The administrative group members of schools were invited to participate in this study. The sample included 510 participants, and the hypotheses were tested by using the path analysis and bootstrapping methods in the Mplus program to examine how ethical leadership influences knowledge sharing, through various means of identification. The results of this study show that ethical leadership has both a direct and indirect effect on knowledge sharing. There are two mediating paths in the ethical leadership-knowledge sharing relationship.
- Firstly, group identification mediates the relationship between ethical leadership and knowledge sharing. Secondly, ethical leadership has an influence on knowledge sharing by means of increased relational and organizational identification. This is a pioneering article that explores the psychological mechanism between ethical leadership and knowledge sharing, using the social identity approach. This study has shown that the social identity theory (SIT) is a useful and promising perspective for future research studies on ethical leadership-knowledge sharing
Leadership Research Implications and Findings:
- This study is one of the first to explore the influence of ethical leadership on knowledge sharing through various identification mechanisms. Based on SIT, this study showed how ethical leadership fosters the identification of its followers and then enhances their knowledge sharing. First, the results of this study have shown that ethical leadership is positively related to employee knowledge sharing. This is consistent with previous studies (e.g., Lei et al., 2019; Su et al., 2021). Current studies have fully demonstrated the importance of ethical leadership in promoting employee knowledge sharing. Second, previous studies have found many mediators between ethical leadership and knowledge sharing, such as employees’ subjective well-being, social media interaction, positive reciprocity, moral efficacy, controlled motivation, moral identity, relational social capital etc. (Bavik et al., 2018; Abdullah et al., 2019; Bhatti et al., 2020; Su et al., 2021). This study further to prove that employees’ identifications are also important mediators. Specifically, this study demonstrated that ethical leadership has an indirect effect on knowledge sharing through increased group identification. Furthermore, ethical leadership exhibits a serial mediating effect on knowledge sharing via increased relational and organizational identification.
- This study has some important theoretical contributions. Firstly, based on SIT, this study reveals how ethical leadership affects knowledge sharing by means of different kinds of identification. In the extant literature, researchers have proven that motivation, moral identity, trust, and culture are important mediators for the ethical leadership-knowledge sharing relationship (Bavik et al., 2018; Le and Lei, 2018; Lei et al., 2019). This study proves further that the employees’ perceptions of identification could translate into the influence of ethical leadership on knowledge sharing. In the workplace, employees rarely perform tasks or jobs alone, as they usually work within a workgroup. Therefore, it is important for employees to identify with the workgroup.
- This study demonstrates that ethical leadership has not only a direct effect on knowledge sharing, but it also has an indirect effect through increased group identification. This result is consistent with previous studies that group identification is an important psychological mechanism that connects leadership with the followers’ desired organizational behavior (Liu and Li, 2018). Moreover, this study examines the impact of ethical leadership on knowledge sharing via relational and organizational identification. This serial mediation effect not only echoes the argument that different types of identification might converge (Sluss and Ashforth, 2008; Sluss et al., 2012), but it also gives us a clearer understanding of the mechanism between ethical leadership and knowledge sharing. Although previous studies have found several mediators between ethical leadership and knowledge sharing, this study is the first one exploring the psychological mechanism on the ethical leadership-knowledge sharing relationship with a perspective of SIT. The results of this study depict a vivid picture of how different kinds of employee identification mediate the relationship between ethical leadership and knowledge sharing. It shows us that the identification of employees could be a promising psychological mechanism for the relationship between ethical leadership and knowledge sharing for future studies.
- Secondly, introducing SIT into this study has expanded the scope of its application. More importantly, depending on the abundant research results of SIT in previous studies, it could offer many useful insights for future knowledge-sharing studies. For example, this study indicates that organizational identification is significantly related to knowledge sharing. Previous studies on SIT have already shown that organizational identification could be promoted from different perspectives, such as perceived organizational prestige (Carmeli et al., 2007) or support (Zagenczyk et al., 2011), etc. This study thus has a more theoretical ground for exploring how to increase the employees’ organizational identification, which, in turn, promotes knowledge sharing. Similarly, the results of this study also contribute to the social identity model of leadership (Hogg, 2001; Epitropaki et al., 2017). In this model, researchers argue that leaders could promote the followers’ positive behavior, depending on the shape of their identification. This study offers some evidence to support this model by showing that ethical leaders could motivate followers to perform knowledge sharing (positive behaviors) by shaping their group and organizational identification.
- The study has several important implications for managers. Firstly, the results indicate that ethical leadership has positive direct and indirect effects on knowledge sharing. It means that if managers could serve as ethical role models and ensure that their followers can work in a moral environment, it could effectively promote the followers’ knowledge sharing behavior. Also, ethical leadership can also play a role in reducing work-related stress (Zhou et al., 2015). Thus, it is important for companies to help their leaders to become good ethical leaders. For example, in order to improve the managers’ moral awareness, companies could offer more ethical training programs for their managers.
- Secondly, the relationship between group identification and knowledge sharing is significant. Managers could create a more positive atmosphere within the workgroup, or a higher group reputation, which could both help group members to have a higher level of group identification. Finally, the research has found that the relational identification of employees with their supervisors is an important mediator that translates ethical leadership into organizational identification, which, in turn, leads to knowledge sharing. In general, when a subordinate-manager relationship is more attractive or desirable, employees are more willing to identify with the role relationship. Thus, managers should keep in mind that it is important to build a positive and high-quality relationship with their subordinates, in order to increase their relational identification.