Enhancing employees’ knowledge sharing through diversity-oriented leadership and strategic internal communication during the COVID-19 outbreak

By Yeunjae Lee, Weiting Tao, J. Li, Ruoyu Sun. Journal of Knowledge Management, 2020

155 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Purpose This study aims to examine the effects of diversity-oriented leadership and strategic internal communication on employees’ knowledge-sharing behavior during a crisis situation, coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in particular. Integrating knowledge sharing research with internal crisis communication literature as well as self-determination theory, the mediating roles of employees’ intrinsic needs satisfaction are also identified. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was conducted with 490 full-time employees in the USA across industry sectors during the COVID-19 outbreak. Findings Results suggest that diversity-oriented leadership contributes to transparent internal communication during a crisis and increases employees’ satisfaction of autonomy, competence and relatedness needs. Transparent internal communication also increases employees’ intrinsic needs satisfaction, which in turn fosters their job engagement and knowledge-sharing behavior during the crisis. Originality/value This study is one of the earliest studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of diversity-oriented leadership and strategic internal crisis communication in enhancing employees’ knowledge-sharing behavior, especially in the context of COVID-19.

Subfields: Communication, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/697296b38497f6dfbfb25a8add572ef77cac5e8b