The Impact of Management Style on the Intention to Share knowledge in China

Knowledge management (KM) is a dominant theme in the behaviour of contemporary organisations. While KM has been extensively studied in developed economies, it is much less well understood in developing economies, notably those that are characterised by different social and cultural traditions to the mainstream of Western societies. This is notably the case in China. In this paper, we develop and test a theoretical model that explains the impact of management style and interpersonal trust on the intention of information and knowledge workers in China to share their knowledge with their peers. All but one of the hypotheses are supported, with 28.7% of the variance in employees’ intention to share knowledge explained. We discuss the theoretical contributions of the paper, identify future research opportunities, and highlight the implications for practicing managers.