An Empirical Study of Responsible Leadership on Knowledge Sharing in Chinese SMEs: The Mediating Effect of Positive Working Atmosphere and Moderating Effect of Psychological Contract Violation

This research revealed the process of increasing knowledge sharing in Chinese SMEs and suggested the way to improve knowledge sharing. As a factor that enhances knowledge sharing, it focused on responsible leadership. The main reason is that responsible leadership is emphasized as a key variable that leads organizational members' positive attitudes and behaviors toward their organization in the context of Chinese organizational culture. Although the importance of knowledge sharing and responsible leadership is being emphasized in Chinese SMEs, empirical studies verifying the causal relationship between responsible leadership and knowledge sharing are still insufficient. Based on such issues, this study attempted to clarify the causal relationship between responsible leadership and knowledge sharing. It also identified the mediating role of a positive working atmosphere in the process of inducing knowledge sharing. Furthermore, in relation to variables that can determine the level of knowledge sharing, the moderating role of psychological contract violation was identified. In order to verify the hypotheses, this study conducted a survey on employees who work in Chinese SMEs and used a total of 331 questionnaires for empirical analysis. It used measurements in previous research which were verified the validity to measure all variables and the empirical analysis included demographic analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis. The Hayes' SPSS PROCESS Macro 3.4 program and AMOS 24.0 program were used in this study. The results showed that responsible leadership had a significant positive influence on a positive work atmosphere and knowledge sharing. In addition, it was found that positive work atmosphere had a significant positive influence on members' knowledge sharing. Furthermore, it was verified that responsible leadership had a positive influence on knowledge sharing via positive job atmosphere.It concluded that positive job atmosphere was a mediation factor that lead to knowledge sharing. However, contrary to what was expected in this study, it was found that responsible leadership and positive working atmosphere were not associated with psychological contract violation. Furthermore, the moderating effect of psychological contract violation was found to be insignificant in the relationship between responsible leadership and positive working atmosphere. In general, previous researches have been verified that psychological contract violation is a negative variable that induces organizational members' negative attitudes and behaviors and such process reduces individual and organizational performance. However, the results of this study are different from those of previous researches. The results revealed another aspect of the role of contract violation in Chinese SMEs. Overall, this research presented a new research model for the process leading to knowledge sharing and contributed to expanding the research field of responsible leadership and knowledge sharing. Furthermore, theoretical and practical implications were presented via the results of this study and the future research directions were presented.