Organization justice, knowledge sharing and employees' innovative behavior: evidence from the knowledge-intensive industry

Purpose Encouraging employees to display innovative behavior at the workplace is the need of all enterprises in this competitive era of the modern business environment. The study aims to explore the mediating role of knowledge sharing in the relationship between organizational justice and innovative behavior among employees working in the information technology (IT) industry in Vietnam. Design/methodology/approach The research model was tested on the data collected from 387 employees working in IT enterprises with AMOS 22 software. Findings Confirmatory factor analysis implied a good model fit. The results show that knowledge sharing mediates the effects of organizational justice with three main forms distributive, procedural and interactional justice on innovative behavior. Practical implications The findings of this study provide valuable evidence and implications for the executive of IT enterprise in boosting knowledge sharing, and innovative behaviors among the employees, in improving their perception of justice in the workplace. This is particularly important due to the significant role of knowledge sharing in organizational development. Originality/value This study pioneered the identification of the underlying mechanism of organization justice – innovative behavior nexus by highlighting knowledge sharing as a mediator. Moreover, this study takes a step beyond by suggesting a more complicated model that explored mediating two dimensions of knowledge sharing.