A quantitative examination of authentic leadership, tenure, and propensity for knowledge sharing behavior in organizations

Organizations must use limited resources to gain a competitive edge; knowledge sharing among employees, a component of knowledge management, has been linked to this desired outcome. Recently, knowledge management has become a topic of great interest among researchers; their work attempts to empirically identify methods and tools to improve this organizational asset. Knowledge sharing requires employee interactions and the involvement of elements that affect employees, such as leadership. However, there are many identified barriers to knowledge sharing and finding the tools to mitigate these barriers would prove valuable to organizations. This study evaluated the effect of authentic leadership on knowledge sharing behavior to determine if this leadership style could help mitigate knowledge sharing barriers. Given that the length of time a leader supervises followers affects leadership effectiveness, the effect of positional leader tenure on the relationship between authentic leadership and knowledge sharing was included in the study. Authentic leadership and knowledge sharing were found to be positively and significantly related. Positional leader tenure did not moderate this significant relationship. Knowledge sharing appears to be vital to organizational success, and an in-depth understanding of knowledge sharing could create invaluable techniques for removing barriers