Sharing for the right reasons? Influence of leader mindfulness on follower tacit and explicit knowledge sharing

Abstract

Enhancing organizational competitiveness significantly depends on employees’ knowledge sharing, a vital behavior that leaders are likely to influence their followers to participate in. Based on social information processing theory, we theorize that leader mindfulness impacts followers’ tacit and explicit knowledge sharing through two distinct mechanisms: followers’ prosocial motivation and image preservation motivation. Findings from a pilot study and a multi-wave, multi‑source field study indicate that leader mindfulness influences follower tacit knowledge sharing through follower prosocial motivation and follower explicit knowledge sharing through follower image preservation motivation; follower mindfulness amplifies both indirect effects. Supplemental analyses uncover a further pathway: leader mindfulness also promotes follower explicit knowledge sharing via prosocial motivation, whereas the image preservation route does not extend to tacit knowledge sharing. We discuss theoretical and practical implications related to knowledge sharing and leader mindfulness.