Morality impels employees to act: examining how ethical leaders urge employees towards knowledge sharing

ABSTRACT This study investigates when leaders can promote knowledge sharing by leading ethically? Drawing on social learning theory, we hypothesise that ethical leaders can induce knowledge sharing via role modelling. Moreover, social exchange and social capital theories explain that organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) and normative commitment (NC) can boost knowledge sharing among employees through dual mediating effects. We collected two waves data from 506 manager-employee dyads in the banking sector of Pakistan. In addition, structural equation modelling was used to test the model, and bootstrapping was applied to examine the mediation effect. Results show that ethical leadership is positively related to employee knowledge sharing and this relationship is significantly mediated by OCB and NC parallelly. Both are equally important in accounting for the impact of ethical leadership on employee’s knowledge sharing. Our research suggests that ethical leaders can promote knowledge sharing by increasing OCB and engendering NC.