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Top1. Introduction
Today’s competitive environment upholds knowledge as a vital resource for an organization. Accordingly, knowledge management has become one of the major research areas for more than the past two decades. In particular, knowledge sharing has received much attention as it ensures the flow of knowledge among and between individuals, groups and organizations (Bock and Kim, 2002; Zhang and Jasimuddin, 2008; Hasnain et al., 2016). Moreover, it improves organizational learning capacity and creates new knowledge, which in turn enhances the competitive advantage of an organization. The existing literature (e.g., Cummings, 2004; Lin, 2007; Jones and Price, 2004; Jasimuddin et al., 2019; Nakshabandi and Jasimuddin, 2018) showed that knowledge sharing has an impact on production costs, completion time of new product development, team performance, firm innovation capabilities, sales growth and revenue from new products and services and so on. However, despite its positive implications, knowledge sharing in an organization is not an easy task (Welschen et al., 2012). Employees are generally reluctant to share their knowledge.
Scholars have identified organizational and individual factors that may affect knowledge sharing, for example, organizational culture, norms and values (Argote and Ingram, 2000; McKinnon et al., 2003); organizational structure (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1996); rewards, organizational justice, personality and trust (Lin, 2007; Gagné, 2009; Matzler et al., 2011; Schwaer et al., 2012; Jasimuddin, 2008); management support (Connelly and Kelloway, 2003); senior manager’s attitude (Lin and Lee, 2004); human resource management practices (Cabrera et al., 2006), demographic variables (Constant et al., 1994) and attitudes toward knowledge sharing (Bock and Kim, 2002). However, most specifically, organizational culture and organizational leadership are treated as critical success factors for knowledge sharing. Kazi (2005) stated that a knowledge-supporting culture is one of the most important conditions to ensure efficient knowledge flow among organizational members. Several theoretical and empirical contributions have established that leadership also plays a significant role in knowledge management processes, such as sharing, creation and capture (Bryant, 2003; Srivastava et al., 2006; Lakshman, 2007).