Journal of Knowledge Management

Empowering group leaders encourages knowledge sharing: integrating the social exchange theory and
positive organizational behavior perspective
Wei-Li Wu, Yi-Chih Lee,
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Wei-Li Wu, Yi-Chih Lee, (2017) "Empowering group leaders encourages knowledge sharing: integrating the social exchange
theory and positive organizational behavior perspective", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 21 Issue: 2, pp.474-491,
https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-08-2016-0318
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 Empowering group leaders encourages
knowledge sharing: integrating the social
exchange theory and positive
organizational behavior perspective
Wei-Li Wu and Yi-Chih Lee
Downloaded by University of Florida At 02:25 23 March 2018 (PT)
Wei-Li Wu is an
Associate Professor at
the Department of
International Business,
Chien Hsin University of
Science and Technology,
Zhongli City, Taiwan.
Yi-Chih Lee is an
Associate Professor at
the Department of
International Business,
Chien Hsin University of
Science and Technology,
Zhongli City, Taiwan.
Received 6 August 2016
Revised 21 October 2016
Accepted 10 December 2016
This research was supported
by a grant from the Ministry of
Science and Technology to
Wei-Li Wu (MOST
104-2410-H-231-012-).
PAGE 474 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Abstract
Purpose – Knowledge sharing usually happens in a work group context, but it is rarely know how group
leaders influence their members’ knowledge-sharing performance. Based on social exchange theory
(SET) and the perspective of positive organizational behavior (POB), this study aims to argue that a
group leader’s positive leadership (e.g. empowering leadership) can help group members develop
positive psychological capital which can increase their knowledge sharing.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors conduct a multilevel analysis to explore the
interrelationship among empowering leadership, psychological capital and knowledge sharing. The
sample includes 64 work groups consisting of 537 group members, and empirical testing is carried out
by hierarchical linear modeling.
Findings – The results show that empowering leadership in a work group has a direct cross-level
impact on members’ knowledge sharing and that psychological capital partially mediates the
relationship between empowering leadership and knowledge sharing. As a result, this study shows that
group leaders with positive leadership can help their members develop better positive psychological
resources, which should lead to better knowledge sharing.
Originality/value – Based on the multilevel perspective and SET, this is the first study to explore how
group leaders’ empowering leadership influences members’knowledge sharing. Depending on
integrating the POB perspective into SET, this study is also the first one that connects two emerging and
important research issues – POB and knowledge sharing.
Keywords Empowering leadership, Positive organizational behaviour, Knowledge sharing,
Social exchange theory, Psychological capital
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
In the age of the knowledge economy, knowledge sharing plays a key role in the
knowledge-management process (Foss et al., 2010). Previous studies have proven that
good knowledge sharing can effectively elevate an organization’s absorptive capabilities,
productivity, performance and competitive advantages (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990; Argote
and Ingram, 2000; Dyer and Nobeoka, 2000). Therefore, successful knowledge sharing is
vital for a company’s survival and sustainable operation (Tangaraja et al., 2015). Even
though knowledge sharing can produce many benefits for companies, it does not occur
spontaneously (Cabrera and Cabrera, 2002). Moreover, because the main executors of
knowledge sharing within organizations are their employees, it is important to understand
employees’ psychological processes surrounding knowledge sharing (Lin and Lo, 2015; Li
et al., 2015). Thus, a micro-foundation approach should be used to analyze the issue of
VOL. 21 NO. 2 2017, pp. 474-491, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1367-3270 DOI 10.1108/JKM-08-2016-0318
 knowledge sharing at the individual and group level (Grandori, 2001; Foss, 2007;
Michailova and Foss, 2009).
Research has found that many individual characteristics have significant effects on the
intentions and behaviors of knowledge sharing, including trust, motivation, norms,
perceived organizational support and personality traits (Bock et al., 2005; Cabrera et al.,
2006; Gagné, 2009; Lam and Lambermont-Ford, 2010; Reinholt et al., 2011; Wang et al.,
2012). In contrast to these rich findings at the individual level, we know little about the
antecedents of knowledge sharing at multiple levels. Because employees usually work and
share knowledge in a group context, an understanding of how group context factors,
including group leaders, impacts group members, is important. In a work group, the group
leader usually has a significant impact on group members’ attitudes and behaviors
(Hsiung, 2012; Lorinkova and Perry, 2017; Li et al., 2017). However, previous literature on
knowledge sharing rarely mentions the possible effects of group leadership on the
employees’ knowledge sharing. Also, although the antecedent factors affecting knowledge
sharing cover different levels (i.e. individual and group), only in recent years have scholars
begun to analyze knowledge sharing using multilevel perspectives (Liu et al., 2011; Liu and
Phillips, 2011).
Most studies of the relationship between leadership styles and knowledge sharing have
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only explored the effects of transformational leadership (Shih et al., 2012; Liu and DeFrank,
2013), potentially overlooking other important leadership concepts. In current
organizations, employees are typically professionally oriented and have work autonomy.
Yet, previous studies have failed to assess how group leaders’ empowerment affects
employees’ knowledge sharing at the multilevel. As a result, it raises two research
questions in this study:
RQ1. This study explores whether group-empowering leaders have an influence on
members’ knowledge sharing based on the multilevel perspective.
RQ2. This study also targets to figure out what is the potential mediating mechanism
between empowerment leadership and knowledge sharing.
We aim to answer RQ1 by using the social exchange theory (SET) (Blau, 1964) to establish
a cross-level relationship between empowering leadership and knowledge sharing. SET
suggests that leaders first establish exchange relationships with their subordinates by
giving benefits, which subordinates repay by performing reciprocal behaviors (Lorinkova
and Perry, 2017). In recent years, empowering leadership has been proven to be a
group-level construct (Fong and Snape, 2015) with a cross-level influence on individuals.
In addition, empowering leadership can be considered a benefit to subordinates
(Lorinkova and Perry, 2017). According to SET, we assume that when employees perceive
that leaders give them empowerment (i.e. a benefit), they will be more willing to share
knowledge as a reciprocal behavior. Therefore, empowering leadership might have a
cross-level impact on employee knowledge sharing.
Aside from drawing on the benefit-reciprocation assumption of SET to explore the
empowering leadership– knowledge sharing relationship, we also incorporate the
perspective of positive organizational behavior (POB) into SET to explain how and why
such a relationship might occur to respond to RQ2. POB researchers advise taking a
positive approach to organizational behavior studies (Luthans, 2002; Bakker and Schaufeli,
2008; Wright and Quick, 2009). By focusing on positive self-development, organizations
could inspire and boost employees’ performance. In this study, we try to use the POB
perspective to complement the SET assumption above from benefits-reciprocation into
bestowed benefit-positive self-development-reciprocation. The POB perspective helps us
further emphasize the positive self-development of recipients (i.e. employees). This new
assumption argues that when employees who experience positive self-development
become more capable of reciprocating. Because POB highly values the importance of the

VOL. 21 NO. 2 2017 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PAGE 475

 individual positive psychological condition (Bakker and Schaufeli, 2008; Luthans and
Avolio, 2009), we define positive self-development in this study as an individual’s positive
psychological resource development. Accordingly, we develop a positive
leadership-psychological resource development-knowledge-sharing framework as our
overarching theoretical background. Empowering leadership is one kind of positive
leadership (Seibert et al., 2011; Li et al., 2017). In this study, we assume that empowering
leadership (positive leadership) helps to enhance employees’ positive psychological
resources and then allows them to return supervisors’ benefits with a greater capability to
share knowledge. In this study, we will use the construct of psychological capital to present
the status of employees’ positive psychological resources, as it has proven to be an
important positive psychological resource for employees in POB research in recent years
(Luthans and Youssef, 2007; Luthans et al., 2008; Luthans et al., 2010; Newman et al.,
2014).
The theoretical framework of this study is shown in Figure 1. Based on SET, we assume that
empowering leadership will have a cross-level influence on employees’ knowledge sharing.
Combining the perspectives of SET and POB, we further conceptualize that empowering
leadership will also have an indirect impact on knowledge sharing by enhancing employees’
positive psychological capital. This study will add to extant research on knowledge sharing in
at least three ways. First, although employees usually perform knowledge sharing in the group
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context, few studies consider the antecedents of knowledge sharing at both the individual and
group level. Second, by clarifying the relationship between empowering leadership and
knowledge sharing, we examine the social exchange between leaders and their subordinates.
This extends previous knowledge-sharing studies, which usually only explore the influences of
social exchange relationship between colleagues. Third, this study will help connect the
knowledge-sharing research with POB by introducing the construct of psychological capital as
a mediator.

Theory and hypotheses

We will use SET to theorize the relationship between empowering leadership and
knowledge sharing. The relationship between empowering leadership and psychological
capital, and between psychological capital and knowledge sharing, are established based
on a POB perspective. Finally, we combine SET and POB to theorize the empowering
leadership-psychological capital-knowledge-sharing relationship.

Knowledge sharing
One of the most important issues in the field of knowledge management is how to effectively
promote knowledge sharing (Zhang and Jiang, 2015). If employees lack the will to share
knowledge, then organizations cannot benefit from subsequent knowledge creation or the
formation of competitive advantages. In addition, in the research field of knowledge
management, the terms knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer seem interchangeable.

Figure 1 Research framework

Empowering leadership Group level

Individual level

Knowledge sharing

Psychological capital  Knowledge donang

 Knowledge collecng

PAGE 476 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT VOL. 21 NO. 2 2017

 Therefore, this study addresses the similarities and differences of both discourses first of
all. Regarding the similarities, both constructs deal with the issues of knowledge donating
and knowledge collecting (van den Hooff and de Ridder, 2004; Wilkesmann et al., 2009).
Thus, how to foster knowledge exchange effectively among knowledge workers is the same
goal of both discourses. As for the differences, previous studies sometimes consider
knowledge transfer as the result of the knowledge sharing process, with the better level of
knowledge sharing ending up with the better level of knowledge transfer (Cabrera and
Cabrera, 2005; Foss et al., 2010). Authors also sometimes treat knowledge transfer that
includes knowledge sharing (Wu et al., 2007). Furthermore, knowledge transfer usually has
been used to describe the flow of knowledge between different divisions or organizations
rather than among individuals (Wang and Noe, 2010). In this study, we instead focus on
fostering individuals’ knowledge exchange rather than knowledge exchange between
divisions or organizations. Thus, we use the term knowledge sharing instead of knowledge
transfer in this study, but this study does recognize that these two constructs are
interchangeable in some previous studies.
Davenport and Prusak (1998) pointed out that knowledge sharing primarily occurs in the
knowledge market within organizations, implicating the buyer and seller of knowledge, and
the exchange and sharing of knowledge is a type of social-exchange behavior. Knowledge
sharing is also a process of communication and learning in which knowledge providers
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externalize internal knowledge, whereas knowledge learners internalize external

knowledge, thereby achieving the purpose of communication and learning (Hendris, 1999).
Van den Hooff and de Ridder (2004) suggested that in the process of knowledge sharing,
individuals can be divided into knowledge providers and knowledge acquirers and
represent the processes of knowledge donating and knowledge collecting in knowledge
sharing. Overall, knowledge sharing implicates the two dimensions of knowledge donating
and collecting (van den Hooff and de Ridder, 2004; Foss et al., 2009; Reinholt et al., 2011),
where the teaching and learning of knowledge is the main focus. Therefore, this study
simultaneously explores knowledge donating and collecting by members in the process of
knowledge sharing in work groups. Furthermore, this study relies on van den Hooff and de
Ridder’s (2004) definition of knowledge sharing, in which knowledge donating refers to
members actively sharing their knowledge with others in the process of knowledge sharing;
knowledge collecting refers to actively asking colleagues for their knowledge in the
process of knowledge sharing.
Previous studies have pointed out many important determinants that have significant
influences on knowledge sharing. Some of the antecedents are individual characteristics,
such as trust, intrinsic motivation, perceived organizational support and personalities (Bock
et al., 2005; Cabrera et al., 2006; Gagné, 2009; Lam and Lambermont-Ford, 2010; Reinholt
et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2012). Some antecedents are also related to social interaction
mechanism, social capital, organizational culture and leadership styles (Srivastava et al.,
2006; Wu et al., 2007; Wilkesmann et al., 2009; Gooderham et al., 2011; Wu and Lee, 2016).
Of all the antecedents, leadership styles should be considered as important determinants
of knowledge sharing because leaders usually have a significant influence on their
subordinates (Hsiung, 2012; Lorinkova and Perry, 2017; Li et al., 2017). In fact, previous
studies have already provided some knowledge regarding on how leadership styles
influence knowledge sharing. In general, positive leadership styles (e.g. transformational
leadership and empowering leadership) can have a positive impact on knowledge sharing
(Srivastava et al., 2006; Liu and Phillips, 2011), whereas negative leadership styles (e.g.
abusive supervision) can cause a negative influence on knowledge sharing (Wu and Lee,
2016). Nowadays, employees usually work and perform knowledge sharing in the group
context. Therefore, it is important to understand how group leaders’ leadership styles
influence group members’ knowledge sharing based on the multilevel perspective.
Although Liu and Phillips (2011) and Liu and DeFrank (2013) found that transformational

VOL. 21 NO. 2 2017 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PAGE 477

 leadership has a cross-level influence on knowledge sharing, we still do not know much
about this issue. Specifically, the cross-level influence of empowering leadership is
overlooked by previous studies, with past discussions of empowering leadership and
knowledge sharing limited to Srivastava et al. (2006) and Xue et al. (2011), who explored
this issue at the group level and individual level, respectively. It remains unknown whether
there are cross-level effects between empowering leadership and the knowledge sharing
of team members. This study fills this gap in the literature by exploring how empowering
leadership influences knowledge sharing on a multilevel basis and profiles the mechanism
for this causal relationship.

Empowering leadership
Empowering leadership originates from different types of traditional leadership theories,
such as caring leadership, supportive leadership and contextual leadership (Srivastava
et al., 2006). Early on, the concept of empowerment emphasized only that leaders must
share power with employees. Later, scholars proposed that the process of empowering
leadership must include encouragement of employees’ work (Conger and Kanungo, 1988;
Thomas and Velthouse, 1990). Srivastava et al. (2006) describe empowering leadership as
being when leaders share power with subordinates and engage in actions that further
elevate their intrinsic motivation. In empowering leadership, employees should have
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greater ability for self-control and management, as well as greater intrinsic motivation and
work involvement regarding their jobs (Kirkman and Rosen, 1997, 1999; Thomas and
Velthouse, 1990), which results in better personal performance and better work attitudes
(Vecchio et al., 2010). Ahearne et al. (2005) argued that empowering leaders emphasizes
the importance of subordinates’ work; it would allow subordinates to participate in
decisions, which should render them more confident and enable them to perform better
while removing past bureaucratic limitations. This study draws on Srivastava et al. (2006)
regarding empowering leadership, defining it as being when leaders share power with
subordinates and produce greater intrinsic motivation and cultivate better performance.
The concrete actions of empowering leadership include leading by example, participative
decision-making, coaching, informing and showing concern (Arnold et al., 2000; Srivastava
et al., 2006).

Empowering leadership and knowledge sharing

Based on SET (Blau, 1964), this study theorizes that empowering leadership has a positive
effect on the knowledge sharing of group members. First, empowering leaders would more
fully share company knowledge with group members (Spreitzer, 1996; Arnold et al., 2000).
Usually, group leaders like their subordinates to share knowledge because doing so
improves group performance (Wu and Lee, 2016). According to SET’s reciprocity rules,
because employees can receive lots of information from their leaders, employees might be
more willing to perform knowledge sharing with their colleagues in return. By doing so,
employees can help their leaders spread important knowledge and potentially improve
group performance. Thus, empowering leadership could increase employee knowledge
donation. Second, because empowering leaders would express a greater degree of
participative decision-making, they are inclined to help group members independently and
autonomously resolve problems (Arnold et al., 2000). Under such empowering leadership,
group members would have more opportunities to grow. According to the SET perspective,
the growing opportunity could be considered a benefit from leaders. Because empowering
leaders would usually hope that employees would become more active and enthusiastic at
work, employees might be more eager to engage in knowledge collection to become more
capable employees to return the growing opportunity given by leaders. Therefore,
empowering leadership should be positively related to knowledge collection. Final,
because empowering leaders delegate more power and provide more autonomy,
empowered group members might perform more citizenship in return. Previous studies

PAGE 478 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT VOL. 21 NO. 2 2017

 have shown that empowering leadership is positively related to employee organizational
citizenship behaviors (Li et al., 2017). Both knowledge donation and collection could be a
type of organizational citizenship behavior (Wu and Lee, 2016). Therefore, empowering
leaders should increase employee knowledge sharing. In sum, this study argues that
empowering leadership by group leaders can have a positive effect on the knowledge
sharing of its group members.
H1. Empowering leadership in a work group is positively related to group members’
knowledge sharing.
H1a. Empowering leadership in a work group is positively related to group members’
knowledge donation.
H1b. Empowering leadership in a work group is positively related to group members’
knowledge collection.

Psychological capital
The concept of psychological capital comes from positive organizational behavior and
argues that organizations should emphasize the cultivation of employees’ positive internal
psychological resources, in turn promoting their performance, extra-role behavior and
well-being (Luthans and Youssef, 2007; Newman et al., 2014). In terms of theoretical and
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empirical data support, Luthans and colleagues considered psychological capital as being
a higher-order factor composed of, and formed from, the four positive psychological
resources of self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience (Luthans et al., 2007; Luthans and
Youssef, 2007). With the integrated development of these four positive psychological
resources, employees would be able to form a more synergistic positive psychological
resource, leading to more positive expectations and motives regarding the solution of
problems; to pose more possible solutions for problems; and to quickly rebound when
encountering difficulties and thus achieve greater performance. In other words, employees
with a great deal of psychological capital have more positive state-like capacity to help
themselves achieve goals and pursue success (Luthans et al., 2010). More and more
studies show that psychological capital can produce positive effects on attitudes,
behaviors and work performance (Avey et al., 2010; Peterson et al., 2011; Abbas et al.,
2014). Following Luthans et al. (2007, 2010) and Luthans and Youssef (2007), this study
defines psychological capital as a higher-order factor composed of, and formed from, the
four positive psychological resources of self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience, and
such positive capacity can effectively help employees achieve their goals.

Empowering leadership and psychological capital

According to POB research, positive leadership will positively affect employees’
psychological capital, a causal relationship proven by previous studies in recent years
(Gooty et al., 2009; Rego et al., 2012; Gupta and Singh, 2014). In a work group, an
empowering leader stresses sharing power with group members and encourages their
intrinsic work motivation. This study argues that such empowering leadership can help
cultivate psychological capital in group members. Previous studies have pointed out that
when empowering leaders show positive emotional support (through encouraging
language and modeling successful actions to subordinates); they help elevate the
self-efficacy of subordinates (Ahearne et al., 2005; Srivastava et al., 2006). In addition,
empowering leaders provide group members with greater care and support. When
members are in a supportive environment, they are more likely to try different methods and
encourage themselves to move toward set objectives; at the same time, they are more
inclined to view matters around them with optimism (Luthans et al., 2008). Finally,
empowering leaders not only empower employees but also lead by example and serve as
coaches (Arnold et al., 2000). As a result, when employees face setbacks in their work, the
guidance of leaders can quickly help them to find solutions, thus possibly improving their

VOL. 21 NO. 2 2017 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PAGE 479

 resilience. Based on these deductions, we can clearly find that the leadership styles of
empowering leaders would have positive effects on the important psychological resources
in the psychological capital. Thus, this study hypothesizes that empowering leadership can
have a positive effect on the cultivation of the psychological capital of group members.
H2. Empowering leadership in a work group is positively related to group members’
psychological capital.

Psychological capital and knowledge sharing

According to the POB, when employees have more positive psychological resources (i.e.
psychological capital), they can deal with work-related events with more positivity,
motivation and perseverance (Luthans et al., 2007; Walumbwa et al., 2010). Somehow,
employees need to have a certain level of positivity and motivation before donating
knowledge. They also need positivity, motivation and perseverance to deal with difficulty as
conducting knowledge collecting. Thus, this study expects that when group members have
greater psychological capital, they will engage in greater knowledge sharing. We theorize
this causal relationship as follows.
In the workplace, employees are often afraid and unwilling to share their unique knowledge
with their colleagues, as they think they will lose their exclusive power over the knowledge
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(Jarvenpaa and Staples, 2001; Lu et al., 2006). When an individual is experiencing positive
emotions, her thoughts and actions tend to be more expansive, thus improving her ability
to develop her abilities and social relationships; by contrast, when an individual
experiences negative emotions, her thoughts and action plans will be narrower, causing
her to express more defensive actions (Fredrickson, 2001, 2003). Therefore, this study
deduces that group members with high psychological capital have more positive emotions,
rendering them more willing to engage in helpful actions and express extra-role behavior.
For instance, Avey et al. (2010) and Walumbwa et al. (2011) both note that there is a
significant positive relationship between psychological capital and organizational
citizenship behavior. In many work contexts, donation of member knowledge is the
concrete expression of organizational citizenship behavior. Therefore, we predict that
group members with greater psychological capital will be more willing to provide
knowledge to colleagues. On the other hand, group members with less psychological
capital may express narrower and more defensive behaviors; inclined to consider
knowledge donation from a negative perspective, they may further lower their willingness
to share knowledge with colleagues, thus resulting in less knowledge donation to others.
Another important dimension of knowledge sharing is knowledge collection or group
members’ acquisition of new knowledge from colleagues. In a group, colleagues may be
willing to share knowledge, but other members may not be willing to learn (Wu et al., 2007).
This study theorizes that members with greater psychological capital should be more
effective in activities related to learning and acquiring knowledge. Learning new knowledge
means confronting unfamiliar material; the learning process can be full of setbacks and
difficulties and learners may be hesitant. Members with greater psychological capital have
greater self-efficacy, and individuals with high self-efficacy are more confident when they
face new challenges (Bandura, 1997); therefore, they should have a greater belief in their
ability to overcome the challenges that accompany learning new knowledge. Members with
high psychological capital are also more resilient, which helps them quickly recover from
adversity (Masten, 2001; Masten and Reed, 2002). Thus, when such group members face
setbacks and pressure in the learning process, their resilience will help them return to the
correct track of learning knowledge. In addition, members with high psychological capital
will respond more optimistically to the events around them (Schneider, 2001; Carver and
Scheier, 2002), which helps them maintain more optimistic interpretations of setbacks in the
learning process and encourages them to find different ways to achieve set goals (Snyder,
2002). Furthermore, the resources possessed by an individual should influence each other

PAGE 480 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT VOL. 21 NO. 2 2017

 and expand, forming a resource pool (Hobfoll, 2002, 2011). Therefore, positive
psychological resources (e.g. self-efficacy, hope, optimism, resilience) can also form
mutually enhancing learning synergy, thereby achieving greater effects in knowledge
collection.
In sum, this study theorizes that group members with more psychological capital are more
willing to perform knowledge sharing.
H3. A group member’s level of psychological capital is positively related to knowledge
sharing.
H3a. A group member’s level of psychological capital is positively related to knowledge
donating.
H3b. A group member’s level of psychological capital is positively related to knowledge
collecting.

Empowering leadership, psychological capital and knowledge sharing

Based on the bestowed benefit-reciprocation assumption of SET, this study explains how
empowering leadership has a cross-level influence on knowledge sharing. With the POB
perspective, we further distinguish the positive benefit of SET into the giving side and
receiving side and argue that when leaders help subordinates develop with more positive
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psychological resources, subordinates are more capable of performing reciprocal

behaviors to return benefits. As a result, we used the POB perspective to complement SET
and then argue that empowering leadership can promote employees’ knowledge sharing
by enhancing their positive psychological capital.
Recent cross-level studies on empowering leadership have provided some evidence for
this argument. Several of these studies find that empowering leadership has a cross-level
influence on employee behaviors by increasing their positive psychological status (Fong
and Snape, 2015; Lorinkova and Perry, 2017; Li et al., 2017). For example, Lorinkova and
Perry (2017) find that empowering leadership is positively related to employee
psychological empowerment and that it helps to reduce employee cynicism. Li et al. (2017)
also note that empowering leadership can increase individual-level affiliative organizational
citizenship behavior (OCB) and taking charge by enhancing employee psychological
empowerment. On the other hand, previous studies also show that psychological capital is
an important mediator between positive leadership and positive organizational behavior
(e.g. OCB and creativity behaviors) (Gooty et al., 2009; Rego et al., 2012; Gupta and Singh,
2014). These studies show that once subordinates can develop higher levels of
psychological capital through positive leadership, they can return their supervisors with
better performance. As a result, according to the previous research of empowering
leadership and psychological capital, and the theoretical inferences of H1–H3, we argue
that empowering leaders can elevate the psychological capital of group members, in turn
influencing their knowledge sharing.
H4. A group member’s psychological capital mediates the relationship between
empowering leadership and knowledge sharing.
H4a. A group member’s psychological capital mediates the relationship between
empowering leadership and knowledge donating.
H4b. A group member’s psychological capital mediates the relationship between
empowering leadership and knowledge collecting.

Methodology
Sample
This study uses a survey to collect data in Taiwan. The group questionnaires in this study
are divided into two parts:

VOL. 21 NO. 2 2017 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PAGE 481

 1. the group leader questionnaire, in which the group leader evaluates the group’s basic
information, control variables and leader demographics; and
2. the group member questionnaire, in which group members fill out information on
empowering leadership, psychological capital, knowledge sharing, control variables
and their demographic.
Each set of group questionnaires includes one leader questionnaire and several
group-member questionnaires. However, in practice, as the collection of group
questionnaires is difficult to a certain extent, this study uses purposive sampling for the
survey. We believe that one important research variable in this study, empowering
leadership, should have generalized effects on subordinates; therefore, our collection of
sample data is not limited to a specific industry, and our samples cover the manufacturing
industry, service industry and financial industry. First, we telephoned firms to inquire about
their willingness to participate in the study. After confirming the number of groups at each
company, we mailed or personally delivered questionnaires. When conducting the survey,
the researcher explained the research purpose and questionnaire administration methods
in detail to the contact person or group leader. After the questionnaires were completed,
the contact person was asked to mail them back to us or we personally collected the
questionnaires from the company.
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After discarding incomplete questionnaires, we ended up with usable samples from 64

groups, including 64 group leader questionnaires and 537 group member questionnaires.
Among them, 14 groups are from the manufacturing industry, 36 from the service industry
and 14 from the financial industry. The average group size is 13.95 people. Regarding
group leaders, 61.9 per cent are male. The mean age of the group leaders is 44.31, and
85.5 per cent of group leaders have an associate’s degree or above. The mean working
tenure of group leaders is 19.45 years. Regarding group members, 39.7 per cent are male,
and the mean age of group members is 36.6. Over 90 per cent of group members have an
associate’s degree or above. The mean working tenure of group members is 12.11 years.

Measures
Knowledge sharing. We adopt the knowledge-sharing scale of van den Hooff and de
Ridder (2004). This scale primarily measures knowledge donating with six items and
knowledge collecting with four items. Knowledge-donating items include “I share the
information I have with colleagues within my work group” and “I share my skills with
colleagues within my work group” on a scale ranging from 1 ⫽ strongly disagree to 7 ⫽
strongly disagree. The Cronbach’s ␣ for this scale was 0.94. Knowledge collecting items
include “Colleagues within my work group tell me what they know, when I ask them about
it” and “Colleagues within my work group tell me what their skills are when I ask them about
it”, 1 ⫽ strongly disagree to 7 ⫽ “strongly disagree”. The Cronbach’s ␣ for this scale was
0.95.
Psychological capital. The scale for psychological capital primarily adopts the
measurement items of Luthans et al. (2007), which views psychological capital as a
potential high-level factor construct based on self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience.
This study refers to the methodology of Walumbwa et al. (2011) and Wu and Lee (2016),
with two items taken from each of the four dimensions of psychological capital for a total of
eight items for measurement. Group members will be responsible for evaluating personal
psychological capital, with measurement items such as “I would think of many methods to
complete current work objectives” and “I can easily face stress”. The Cronbach’s ␣ for this
scale was 0.93.
Empowering leadership. The empowering leadership scale uses the method by Srivastava
et al. (2006) to reduce the scale of Arnold et al. (2000). We adopted three items for each of
five factors of empowering leadership in the scale of Arnold et al. (2000) for a total of 15

PAGE 482 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT VOL. 21 NO. 2 2017

 items for measurement. This scale enables group members to self-evaluate the
empowering leadership styles of leaders, with items such as “Sets high standards for
performance with his/her own behavior”, “Encourages work group members to express
ideas/suggestions” and “Helps my work group see areas in which we need more training”.
The Cronbach’s ␣ for this scale was 0.97. Further, to support the aggregation of
empowering leadership, we tested within-group agreement for empowering leadership by
computing the within-group inter-rater agreement (rwg) and intra-class correlation
coefficients. The test yielded the mean value of rwg as 0.96 and the lowest value of 0.73.
The interclass correlation (ICC1) estimate was 42.2 per cent; meanwhile, the ICC2
estimates were 85.9 per cent. Overall, the values of rwg, ICC1, and ICC2 are well above
acceptable levels (Bliese, 2000). Therefore, the aggregated measure of empowering
leadership is justified.
This study also performed a four-factor confirmatory factor analysis model for the above
four measures (knowledge donating, knowledge collecting, psychological capital and
empowering leadership). The model achieved an acceptable fit: GFI ⫽ 0.91, PGFI ⫽ 0.62,
NFI ⫽ 0.95, IFI ⫽ 0.96 and CFI ⫽ 0.96. All of the measures had composite reliability above
0.90 and average variance extracted (AVE) above 0.71. The square roots of all AVE scores
were higher than any correlations of possible focal pair measures. Thus, both convergent
validity and discriminant validity were supported.
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Control variables. At the individual level, we use member demographic variables and trust
as control variables for evaluation by group members. In terms of member demographic
variables, we measured gender (male ⫽ 1, female ⫽ 0), education (measured as six levels:
elementary school or below, junior high school, senior high school, associate’s degree,
bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and PhD) and number of working years. Many
previous studies show that trust has a significant effect on knowledge sharing (Reinholt
et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2012); thus, this study uses members’ trust toward others as
the control variable, citing a trust scale by Walumbwa et al. (2011) for measurement. The
Cronbach’s ␣ for this scale was 0.89. Group leaders are responsible for evaluating the
control variables at the group level. Previous studies show that transformational leadership
has cross-level influence on the intention of group members to share knowledge (Liu and
Phillips, 2011; Liu and DeFrank, 2013); to clarify the effects of empowering leadership, this
study incorporates the transformational leadership style into the control variables. This
study cites the scale by Bass and Avolio (1997) (MLQ Form 6s), with 12 items for group
leaders to evaluate their personal transformational leadership. The Cronbach’s ␣ for this
scale was 0.93. In addition, we used group size and industry type as control variables.
Group size is measured by the number of members in the same group. This study
controlled industry difference by using two dummy variables (i.e. manufacturing industry ⫽
00, service industry ⫽ 10, financial industry ⫽ 01).
In this study, the three key variables at the individual level – namely, psychological capital,
knowledge donating and knowledge collecting – are self-reported measures from the same
sources. To reduce the potential effects of common method bias in our questionnaire
design, we first ask participants to complete the dependent variable questions, then the
independent variable questions. In addition, the result of Harman’s one-factor test
(Podsakof and Organ, 1986) indicates that there is no serious problem regarding common
method bias.

Results
Table I provides the means, standard deviations and correlations of the variables used in
this study. In Table I, we can see that knowledge donating and knowledge collecting are
highly correlated, perhaps because the two variables fall under the same construct of
knowledge sharing.

VOL. 21 NO. 2 2017 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PAGE 483

 Table I Means, standard deviations and correlations
Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Individual level variables

1. Gender 0.40 0.49
2. Education 4.34 0.88 ⫺0.01
3. Working tenure 12.11 7.82 0.02 ⫺0.35***
4. Trust 5.22 1.26 ⫺0.05 ⫺0.07 0.07
5. Psychological capital 5.56 1.03 0.09* ⫺0.10* 0.14** 0.68***
6. Knowledge donating 5.31 1.26 0.01 ⫺0.12** 0.14** 0.62*** 0.64***
7. Knowledge collecting 5.37 1.29 ⫺0.04 ⫺0.10* 0.06 0.64*** 0.59*** 0.74***
Group-level variables
1. Group size 13.95 11.32
2. Service industry 0.56 0.50 0.05
3. Financial industry 0.22 0.42 ⫺0.01 ⫺0.60***
4. Transformational leadership 5.4 0.85 0.01 0.04 ⫺0.02
5. Empowering leadership 5.46 0.77 ⫺0.10 ⫺0.07 0.01 0.46***
Notes: *p ⬍ 0.05; **p ⬍ 0.01; ***p ⬍ 0.001

Because this study involves multilevel issue, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) is an
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appropriate method to be used for the hypothesis tests. A necessary condition for running
HLM models is to have a significant between-group variance in the dependent variables of
interest. There are three dependent variables in this study: knowledge donating,
knowledge collecting and psychological capital. We first estimated a null model for each of
these dependent variables. The results showed that knowledge donating (␶ 00 ⫽ 0.37, p ⬍
0.001; ICC1 ⫽ 0.24), knowledge collecting (␶ 00 ⫽ 0.49, p ⬍ 0.001; ICC1 ⫽ 0.30) and
psychological capital (␶ 00 ⫽ 0.26, p ⬍ 0.001; ICC1 ⫽ 0.25) all have significant
between-group variance. Therefore, using an HLM analysis is justified by the data.
Table II summarizes the results from the HLM analyses. H1 proposes that empowering
leadership in a work group has a positive impact on members’ knowledge sharing. The
results in Model 1 and Model 4 of Table II indicate that empowering leadership is
significantly and positively related to knowledge donating (M1, ␥ ⫽ 0.20, p ⬍ 0.001) and

Table II Results of HLM analyses

Knowledge donating Knowledge collecting Psychological capital
Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6 Model 7

Level 1
Control variables
Gender 0.02a ⫺0.04a ⫺0.03 ⫺0.13 ⫺0.21** ⫺0.19** 0.19**
Education ⫺0.01 ⫺0.03 ⫺0.03 ⫺0.00 ⫺0.01 ⫺0.00 0.01
Tenure 0.01* 0.00 0.01 ⫺0.00 ⫺0.01 ⫺0.01 0.01*
Trust 0.55*** 0.36*** 0.34*** 0.60*** 0.47*** 0.46*** 0.50***
Psychological capital 0.44*** 0.42*** 0.29*** 0.27***
Level 2
Control variables
Group size 0.01** 0.01** 0.01*** 0.00 0.00 0.01 ⫺0.01*
Service industry ⫺0.08 ⫺0.07 ⫺0.04 ⫺0.21 ⫺0.20 ⫺0.17 ⫺0.04
Financial industry ⫺0.21* ⫺0.13 ⫺0.09 ⫺0.19 ⫺0.16 ⫺0.12 ⫺0.28**
Transformational leadership 0.05 0.11* 0.06 0.07 0.16* 0.10 0.03
Empowering leadership 0.20*** 0.13** 0.23** 0.16* 0.16**
Within-group residual variance 0.72 0.63 0.62 0.74 0.64 0.64 0.41
⌬R2within-groupb 0.38 0.47 0.47 0.36 0.43 0.44 0.47
Deviance 1,455.85 1,395.43 1,397.24 1,461.11 1,410.23 1,411.73 1,164.94
Notes: aNot standardized coefficients in HLM results; bdifference compared to the null Model; explained within-group variances in
knowledge sharing by level 1 predictors; *p ⬍ 0.05; **p ⬍ 0.01; ***p ⬍ 0.001

PAGE 484 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT VOL. 21 NO. 2 2017

 knowledge collecting (M4, ␥ ⫽ 0.23, p ⬍ 0.01), respectively. Therefore, both H1a and H1b
are supported. H2 argues that empowering leadership has a positive influence on
psychological capital. Model 7 of Table II shows that empowering leadership is significantly
and positively related to psychological capital (M7, ␥ ⫽ 0.16, p ⬍ 0.01), supporting H2. H3
argues that the psychological capital of a group member has a positive influence on
knowledge sharing. After controlling for control variables, Model 2 and Model 5 of Table II
show that psychological capital is significantly and positively related to knowledge
donating (M2, ␥ ⫽ 0.44, p ⬍ 0.001) and knowledge collecting (M5, ␥ ⫽ 0.29, p ⬍ 0.001),
respectively. Thus, both H3a and H3b are supported.
H4 proposes that psychological capital will mediate the relationship between empowering
leadership and knowledge sharing. To test this mediating effect, we take the approach
suggested by Kenny et al. (1998). First, empowering leadership needs to have an influence
on knowledge sharing (i.e. knowledge donating and knowledge collecting). This condition
is supported by H1a and H1b. Second, empowering leadership must be related to
psychological capital. H2 supports this condition. Third, psychological capital needs to be
related to knowledge sharing, a prerequisite met by H3a and H3b. Once the preceding
three conditions have been met, the fourth step is to further test the mediation to determine
whether it is full or partial. Full mediation exists when both empowering leadership and
psychological capital in the HLM model, and the influence of empowering leadership
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toward knowledge sharing, are reduced to non-significance. Partial mediation exists when
both empowering leadership and psychological capital in the HLM model, and the effect of
empowering leadership toward knowledge sharing, decrease in significance but remain
significant. The results in Model 3 indicate that although empowering leadership remains
significant toward knowledge donating (M3, ␥ ⫽ 0.13, p ⬍ 0.01), the significance level has
decreased when compared with Model 1 (M1, ␥ ⫽ 0.20, p ⬍ 0.001). Meanwhile, Model 6
of Table II shows that the significance level of empowering leadership toward knowledge
collecting has also decreased (M6, ␥ ⫽ 0.16, p ⬍ 0.05) when compared to Model 4 (M4,
␥ ⫽ 0.23, p ⬍ 0.01). Overall, psychological capital partially mediates the relationship
between empowering leadership and knowledge sharing, thus supporting H4.

Discussion and conclusion

Employees’ decisions and activities are always influenced by their work-group
environment. However, most previous knowledge-sharing studies have explored the
antecedents based on individual factors and have rarely taken into account the impact of
a group. Drawing from SET and the POB perspective, this study contributes to the
knowledge-sharing literature by highlighting the importance of empowering leadership and
psychological capital based on a multilevel framework. At the group level, we find that
empowering leadership in a work group has a cross-level influence on both psychological
capital and knowledge sharing. At the individual level, the results show that psychological
capital has a positive impact on knowledge sharing. In addition, psychological capital
plays a partial mediation role between empowering leadership and knowledge sharing.
The results of this study extend previous knowledge-sharing study in several ways. First,
our results show that empowering leadership in a work group can be useful in encouraging
members’ performances of knowledge donating and collecting. Although the cross-level
influences of group leadership on individual knowledge sharing has been acknowledged in
recent years (Liu and Phillips, 2011; Shih et al., 2012; Liu and DeFrank, 2013), we know very
little on the topic beyond transformational leadership. This study helps us learn more about
the impact of leadership style on knowledge sharing. In particular, this study also explored
the mechanism of how positive leadership impacts knowledge sharing. Depending on
combining SET and POB, we provide a positive leadership-positive self-development
(psychological resource development)-reciprocation theoretical framework. With this
theoretical framework, this study argues that empowering leadership (positive leadership)

VOL. 21 NO. 2 2017 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PAGE 485

 can help subordinates have a better level of psychological capital (positive self-
development), which makes subordinates more capable of performing knowledge sharing
(reciprocation) to return leaders’ benefits. The empirical results of this study show that
empowering leadership can enhance knowledge sharing by increasing the positive impact
of psychological capital. Thus, this study provides initial evidence for above theoretical
framework. There are two ways future studies can make theoretical contributions to
knowledge-sharing research based on this theoretical framework. First, future studies can
explore the influence of other types of positive leadership on knowledge sharing. For
example, spiritual leadership (Fry, 2003), authentic leadership (Walumbwa et al., 2008) and
virtual leadership (Wang and Hackett, 2016) are all very important positive types of
leadership. Second, future studies might further explore and discuss different types of
positive psychological resources, such as zest (Peterson et al., 2009), psychological
well-being (Wright et al., 2009) and work engagement (Schaufeli et al., 2006).
Second, this study also extends the application of SET in the knowledge-sharing research.
In previous knowledge-sharing research, SET was an important theoretical lens for
examining how social-exchange relationships between colleagues influences knowledge-
sharing behavior (Lin, 2007; Wu et al., 2007). Although SET has been considered a useful
theoretical framework linking leadership and subordinates’ behaviors (Mayer et al., 2009;
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Tse et al., 2008; Lorinkova and Perry, 2017), studies have rarely applied SET to discuss how
social-exchange relationships between supervisor and subordinates affect subordinates’
knowledge-sharing behavior. With the benefit-reciprocation assumption of SET, this study
shows that empowering leadership has a cross-level influence on knowledge sharing. In
addition, further studies could explore other types of leadership on knowledge sharing
based on SET. For example, supervisor coaching behaviors will have a great positive
benefit on subordinates (Ellinger et al., 2003). Therefore, supervisor coaching behaviors
could be positively related to subordinates’ knowledge sharing. Finally, according to SET’s
norm of reciprocity, destructive leadership might cause a negative norm of reciprocation
between supervisors and their subordinates (Rafferty and Restubog, 2011). Future studies
can explore how destructive leadership impacts knowledge sharing. In a word, SET could
be a useful theoretical lens for us to study knowledge sharing in the future. The results of
this study also contribute to the POB field. Researchers of positive organizational behavior
emphasize that we should develop and value employees’ positive psychological resources
(e.g. psychological capital) because they will lead to positive outcomes for organizations
(Luthans et al., 2007; Luthans et al., 2008; Avey et al., 2010). The results of the current study
show that psychological capital is significantly related to knowledge donating and
collecting. This finding helps to extend the POB field to connect with knowledge-sharing
research. Both POB and knowledge-sharing research are emerging and important
research issues, and we believe they can gain insights from each other.
Finally, we have some suggestions for managers. Within work groups, the group members’
performance of either knowledge donating or collecting needs to be encouraged on some
level. Managers can start by helping to develop members’ positive psychological
resources, such as self-efficacy, hope, optimism and resilience. Once members have
improved their psychological resources, this improvement, in turn, leads to a higher level
of psychological capital, which benefits knowledge sharing. In addition, because
psychological capital is considered to be a state-like attribute that can be improved over
time, managers can first assess their employees’ psychological capital and then use
training intervention to assist employees with low psychological capital. More importantly,
managers can adjust their own leadership style to adapt to their subordinates.
Characteristics of empowering leadership, such as participative decision making, may be
used more often. As a result, empowering leadership can improve group members’
psychological capital and make them more likely to engage in knowledge sharing.

PAGE 486 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT VOL. 21 NO. 2 2017

 Limitations
Some limitations of this study should be mentioned. First, because the influence of
leadership exists across industries, we collected empirical data from several industries.
However, previous studies usually have examined the leadership– knowledge sharing
relationship with respect to a single industry. Therefore, one should be careful in comparing
the results of this study to those of previous studies regarding the influence of leadership
on knowledge sharing. Second, although this study tries to explore the construct of
knowledge sharing by distinguishing two dimensions, specifically knowledge donating and
collecting, we do not discuss the relationship between knowledge donating and collecting.
According to SET, it seems that knowledge donating and knowledge collecting could affect
each other. Future research might address this issue with a longitudinal research design.
Third, we measure knowledge donating by group members’ self-reporting; group members
might overestimate their performance of knowledge donating. Future studies can ask group
members’ colleagues to assess this scale to obtain a more objective assessment. Finally,
group members’ performance of knowledge sharing can also be affected by an
organization’s reward system (organizational level). However, we only consider impacts
from the group and individual levels. In future multilevel studies, researchers might also
consider the determinants of knowledge sharing at the organizational level.
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Corresponding author
Yi-Chih Lee can be contacted at: lyc6115@ms61.hinet.net

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