信任的双刃剑:对变革型领导与知识分享关系的中介作用

Double-Sided Sword of Trust: The Mediating Effect of Affect- and Cognition- Based Trust on the Relationship Between Transformational Leadership and Organizational Knowledge Sharing

知识经济下,知识分享已经成为组织建立核心竞争能力的重要途径。虽然已有研究关注管理者的领导风格对于组织知识分享的影响,但其途径和作用机制,特别是信任在其中发挥的作用却鲜有实证研究。研究了变革型领导与组织知识分享之间的关系,尤其是情感信任和认知信任在其中的中介作用。结果显示:变革型领导与组织知识分享是正相关关系,其中,情感信任和认知信任在两者间起着相反的中介作用,情感信任促进知识分享,而认知信任则阻碍知识分享。研究结果提示,管理者除了应对自身领导行为进行有效调适和鼓励知识分享的制度建设外,在团队人员配置和团队建设方面也要更关注情感信任对于知识分享的积极促进作用。

Knowledge sharing is one of the important measures to build organizational core competence in knowledge economy era. Although there are some studies on the relationship between leadership style and knowledge sharing in organizations, little effort has been made to investigate the mechanism of this relationship, especially the role of trust. Based on the social leaming and social exchange theory, this paper reports a study designed to examine the relationship between transformational leadership and knowledge sharing, taking account of the mediating effect of affect- and cognition-based trust on that relationship. Using multiple data sources from 199 employees and 39 corresponding supervisors of one high-tech company, the study revealed a positive correlation between transformational leadership and knowledge sharing, and most importantly, discovered that the affect- and cognition-based trust play contradictory mediating effect in that process. Specifically, affect-based trust encourages knowledge sharing while cognition-based trust hinders knowledge sharing in the organization. The results suggested that business managers not only rely on self-adjustment of their own leadership behaviors and improvement of motivation system to promote knowledge sharing, but also focus on the positive effect of affect-based trust on knowledge sharing when involving in team staffing.