Write a short paper that demonstrates a brief analysis of the scholarly research article selected. Write paper in APA format in such a way as to answer the questions/issues below. However,

Gadjah Mada International Journal of Business – September-December, Vol. 22, No. 3, 2020

250

Gadjah Mada International Journal of Business Vol. 22, No. 3 (September-December 2020): 250-275

*Corresponding author’s e-mail: [email protected] ISSN: PRINT 1411-1128 | ONLINE 2338-7238

http://journal.ugm.ac.id/gamaijb

Leadership Styles and Organizational Knowledge Management Activities:

A Systematic Review Nabeel Al Amiri*a, Rabiah Eladwiah Abdul Rahima, Gouher Ahmedb

aUniversity Tenaga Nasional, Malaysia bSkyline University College, United Arab Emirates

Abstract: Leaders play a critical role in the success or failure of their organizations. Leaders can be effective in implementing changes, building their organization’s capabilities, and improving its performance, or the opposite, they could be ineffective. In this systematic review, the authors aim to summarize the findings of previous quantitative research, published between the period from 2000 to 2018, to identify the effect of various leadership styles on organizational Knowledge management (KM) capabilities and activities. The authors reviewed 50 articles found in well- known databases included Emerald, ScienceDirect, Taylor and Francis, Ebsco, Google Scholar, and others, concerning the impact of leadership when implementing KM in business organiza- tions. The review revealed that transformational, transactional, knowledge-oriented leadership, top executives, and strategic leadership have evidence of their constant and positive effect on the KM process. The authors encourage organizations to use a combination of those styles to max- imize the effect of leadership on KM. The authors also recommend conducting further studies on the effect of the remaining leadership styles, such as the ethical and servant leadership styles on KM and the other specific KM activities.

Keywords: leadership, leadership styles, knowledge, knowledge management, organization

JEL Classification: M000, M100, M150

Al Amiri et al

251

Introduction According to the literature, KM has

a significant impact on organizational per- formance and innovation. Researchers have found a strong link between KM and differ- ent aspects of management innovation that provide an organization with a competitive advantage. KM’s implementation in business organizations could be affected by sever- al factors, such as the organization culture, budget, infrastructure, technology, and lead- ership.

The impact of leadership on business and organizational management has been recognized as a significant factor that could make a difference in organizational perfor- mance. The academic gurus proposed sev- eral theories, such as the great man theory, various behavioral theories, Lewin’s theory, the contingency theory, the situational lead- ership theory, the transformational theory, the transactional theory (or managerial lead- ership), and many others.

Based on the existing literature, the out- come of implementing KM projects and pro- cesses in organizations varies according to the style of leadership. The evidence reveals a positive impact of leadership styles on KM, while other studies affirm a contradictory result. Therefore, this paper, as per the ex- isting literature, is the first systematic review that aims to identify the leadership styles and roles recognized as facilitators or inhibitors of building KM capabilities in organizations and the contribution of those styles and roles to the successful implementation of KM ac- tivities. Also, it aims to summarize the evi- dence and come up with recommendations to guide researchers in their future projects.

To achieve the study goal, the authors conducted a systematic literature review of

the quantitative studies published between the period from 2000 to 2018 concerning leadership and KM. Hence, we surveyed some well-known databases, including Emer- ald, ScienceDirect, Taylor and Francis, Ebs- co, Google Scholar, and others.

Literature Review Leadership is one of the important top-

ics that are studied extensively by research- ers. They have come up with several different theories and definitions of the concept. To help readers understand the history of the evolution of leadership theories, we have summarized the most common theories in Table 1.

As can be noticed above, there is a prob- lem with the various definitions of leadership, as they are based on one isolated variable. Therefore, Winston and Patterson (2006) came up with a solution by reviewing over 90 variables that were used by previous re- searchers and academic gurus to define lead- ership, and then they proposed an integrated definition of leadership that is “A leader is one or more people who select, equips, trains, and influences one or more follower(s) who have diverse gifts, abilities, and skills and fo- cuses the follower(s) on the organization’s mission and objectives, causing the follow- er(s) to willingly and enthusiastically expend their spiritual, emotional, and physical energy in a concerted coordinated effort to achieve the organization’s mission and objectives.”

Ribie`re1 and Sitar (2003) addressed the critical role of leadership in organizations that were willing to evolve their culture into a knowledge supporting culture and imple- ment successful KM activities. According to Bolden (2010), leadership, management, and organizational development are all parts of

Gadjah Mada International Journal of Business – September-December, Vol. 22, No. 3, 2020

252

one process for enhancing the capacity of organizations, and people, to improve their performance. According to the Center for Creative Leadership, leadership has several roles in developing an organization’s capa- bilities and implementing strategic changes. Leadership enables executive teams to collab- orate effectively to drive change and execute strategy, develop processes, skills, mindsets, and tools to navigate change together, ignite innovation across the organization, manage talent, and create the right culture.

On the other hand, the knowledge-based theory (Curado, 2006) of a firm, which is an

extension of the resource-based theory (Bar- ney, 1991), argued that knowledge is a unique strategic resource that does not depreciate the way traditional resources do. According to Polanyi (1966), knowledge, which is classi- fied as explicit knowledge is transmitted for- mally between people, while tacit knowledge is transmitted informally. Nonaka (1994) de- veloped the dynamic theory of organization- al knowledge’s creation, which proposed that organizational knowledge is created through a continuous exchange between tacit and ex- plicit knowledge via four mechanisms for in- teractions: socialization, combination, inter- nalization, and externalization.

Theory Description Great man theories or hero

Great man (hero) is a wise, gifted, noble-hearted man who stands behind an accom- plishment in the world as an outcome of thoughts that dwelt in him (Carlyle, 1840).

Lewin’s leadership theory and styles

It includes three popular leadership behavioral styles that are autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire (Lewin, Lippitt, and White, 1939).

Leadership behavior and theories

Those theories focus on how leaders behave toward a task, people, and participa- tion, rather than leadership traits (Vroom and Jago, 2007).

Fiedler’s contingency theory

It proposes an interaction of three variables that are leader-member relations, task structure, and leader’s positional power, as determinants for the extent of the situa- tional control that the leader has (Fiedler, 1964).

Situational leadership theory

The style to be used by leaders, such as telling, selling, participating, or delegating depends upon factors, such as the situation, the people, and the task (Blanchard and Hersey, 1969).

Transformational lead- ership

The theory is about the leadership that transforms people and organizations, and raises people to higher levels of motivation and morality. Vision, culture, values, development, teamwork all have meaning in transformational leadership (Fairholm, 2001).

Transactional leadership The theory is about persons who exercise the authority of their office under formal legality; they obey only the law, obligate others, and follow the principle of hierarchy (Weber, 1968, p. 238).

Servant leadership According to Robert Greenleaf (as cited in Essays, UK, 2018), the servant-leader- ship starts with the leader’s feeling to serve and, then, his role is changed to lead.

Authentic leadership According to Walumbwa et al., (2008), authentic leadership is positively related to ethical leadership and transformational leadership. It includes self-awareness of one’s strengths and weaknesses, self-moral perspective, balanced processing, and being true.

Ethical leadership According to Brown, Trevino, and Harrison (2005), ethical leadership is the demonstration of appropriate conduct through communication, reinforcement, and decision-making.

Table 1: The most common leadership theories

Al Amiri et al

253

Hansen, Nohria, and Tierney (1999) proposed two main KM strategies; firstly, the personalization strategy which theorized that tacit knowledge is shared through conversa- tions and direct contact between people, and secondly, the codification strategy which de- scribed the process of conversion of knowl- edge into a resource that can be used later by people.

The evolution of KM in the last 20 years encouraged many authors to find an appro- priate definition that explains the concept. Alavi and Leidner (2001, p. 114) defined KM as a process that involves various activ- ities; minimally it includes the processes of creating, storing and retrieving, transferring, and applying knowledge. In his study, Heisig (2009) summarized the six most frequent- ly used KM activities that are knowledge transfer, creation, application, storage, iden- tification, and acquisition. Also, he listed the critical success factors of KM including: 1) human-oriented factors that are culture, peo- ple, and leadership, 2) organizational process- es and structure, 3) technology’s infrastruc- ture and application, and 4) management processes, including strategies, goals, and outcome measurements.

Young (2010) highlighted four levels of successful KM; firstly, the individual (or personal) level includes personal knowledge, capabilities, experiences, competence, and development that is managed by the individ- uals themselves, by using tools, e.g., mobiles, wireless and web-based applications; second- ly, team KM is recognized as the collabora- tion between team members to produce new knowledge and transfer knowledge based on “share” or “pull” models of knowledge transfer; thirdly, the organizational KM that includes the introduction of a KM strategy and providing the infrastructure to imple-

ment the KM process across the entire orga- nization through the “top-down approach”; and fourthly the inter-organizational KM that adopts knowledge from outside resourc- es, e.g., co-partners, customers, suppliers, and competitors. Based on the above review, we will identify the various leadership styles and roles that fa- cilitate or inhibit an organization’s implemen- tation of its KM activities.

Methods The authors used the systematic review

method to answer the research question and achieve their objectives. The systematic re- view has a high academic value as it is a col- laboration of experts who synthesize strong evidence by reviewing and summarizing sec- ondary data that is relevant to the question under review. This systematic review was un- dertaken from November 2018 to April 2019.

Inclusion criteria of studies In this study, the authors have included

all the papers that met the following criteria:

1. The title of the article includes the word “leadership or leader” or an alternative word, e.g., “manager or supervisor.”

2. The title of the article includes the word “knowledge” or any of the KM activities, e.g., KM, creation, acquisition, identifica- tion, transfer, storage, or application.

3. Leadership is the independent variable or a moderating variable in the study, while KM is a dependent or a mediating variable.

4. Quantitative research. 5. Published in peer-review journals be-

tween the period 2000 and 2018.

Gadjah Mada International Journal of Business – September-December, Vol. 22, No. 3, 2020

254

Exclusion criteria of studies In this study, the authors excluded all the pa- pers that met the following criteria:

1. Research studied the effect of leadership on information systems and technology rather than KM activities.

2. Qualitative or mixed methodology re- search.

3. Non-English papers. 4. Papers published before 2000.

Search Strategy The authors used “leadership,” “leader-

ship styles,” “KM,” and “KM activities” as the key search words to search well-known databases included Emerald, ScienceDirect, Taylor and Francis, Ebsco, Google Scholar, and others.

The authors used “AND & OR” as the main basic Boolean operators to combine keywords in a search. Thus, the main search strategy for this review was “leadership AND (knowledge AND/OR (knowledge manage- ment OR knowledge creation OR knowledge

acquisition OR knowledge identification OR knowledge transfer OR knowledge storage OR knowledge application). Additionally, the authors used the filters recommended by some databases to search for the relevant pa- pers.

Primary Research Methods The review process started by reviewing

the titles and abstracts of the selected articles against the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Then, the included articles were reviewed for the research question, method, sample, tools, and findings. In this study, the included arti- cles are classified in appendixes 1 and 2.

The Study Flow For this systematic review, the preferred

reporting items on systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) flow diagram was used to map out the flow of information through the different phases of the system- atic review. PRISMA (Figure 1) maps out the number of records identified, screened for eligibility, included, and excluded as justified by the inclusion and exclusion criteria (Mo-

Figure 1: PRISMA study flow

Al Amiri et al

255

her, Liberati, Tetzlaff, and Altman, 2009). As a result, we ended up with 50 research papers.

The Study Coding Categories The authors organized the information

into tables, including several sub-sections. Those sub-sections included the author, the year of publication, the design, the sector, the country, the sample size, and the findings. The first author of the study analyzed all the arti- cles and organized the data in the tables. The second and third authors double-checked the results and validated the conclusion and the recommendations.

Results Paper’s Characteristics

Appendix 1 presents the authors of the included research papers, their year of pub- lication, journals’ names, databases, research design, countries, industries, and samples. An analysis of the contents of Table 1 shows that the number of published papers that are rel- evant to the systematic review’s question has significantly increased with time. According to the review, 7 (14%) of the research papers were published between 2001 and 2009, 16 (32%) between 2010 and 2014, and 27 (54%) between 2015 and 2019. The authors found 26 (52%) of those papers in Google Scholar, Emerald had 11 (22%), DirectScience con- tained 3 (6%), Taylor and Francis had 2 (4%), and others held 8 (16%).

Those studies were conducted in nu- merous countries; 12 (24%) in Iran, 7 (14%) in Pakistan, 3 (6%) in Spain, 2 (4%) in Iraq, Taiwan, China, Indonesia, India, Nigeria, and Australia, and 1(2%) in the USA, Thailand, Korea, Croatia, Bangladesh, Singapore, UAE, Bahrain, Mongolia, the UK, the Netherlands, Malaysia, and 2 (4%) in multiple countries.

The studies also covered various indus- trial sectors: education 9 (18%), manufactur- ing 7 (14%), various-sized organizations 6 (12%), ICT 5 (10%), banking 3 (6%), gov- ernment 3 (6%), oil, gas, and thermopower 2 (4%), service 2 (4%), healthcare 2 (4%), research institutes 2 (4%), food industry 2 (4%), hotels 1 (2%), construction 1 (2%), consulting 1 (2%), technology 1 (2%), export processing zones 1 (2%), multimedia super corridor status firms 1 (2%), and a port com- pany 1 (2%). Concerning the methodology, all the papers were cross-sectional researches.

Regarding the size of the research’s samples, 2 (4%) included 1 to 50 participants, 4 (8%) 51 to 100, 6 (12%) 101 to 150, 4 (8%) 151 to 200, 12 (24%) 201 to 250, 11 (22%) 251 to 300, 3 (6%) 301 to 350, 2 (4%) 351 to 400, and 6 (12%) more than 400. Regard- ing the respondents’ positions, 27 (54%) of the sample were employees, 12 (24%) were at various levels, 5 (10%) were managers and supervisors, 4 (8%) senior managers, 1 (2%) experts, and 1 (2%) students.

Appendix 2 presents a summary of the research papers’ contents, including the lead- ership styles and roles, the KM activities, and the outcomes of the research. The analysis of the contents of Table 2 shows that 14 (28%) of the included papers studied trans- formational leadership style, 2 (4%) transac- tional style, 7 (14%) both transformational and transactional styles, 4 (8%) transforma- tional, transactional, and laissez-faire styles, 4 (8%) knowledge leadership, 3 (6%) leader- ship in general, 2 (4%) senior and strategic leadership, 1 (2%) leader-member exchange (LMX), 1 (2%) communicative and non-com- municative styles, 1 (2%) task-oriented and human-oriented styles and 11 (24%) studied multiple leadership styles, including reward- ing, directive, innovator, monitor, autocratic, democratic, consulting, counseling, telling,

Gadjah Mada International Journal of Business – September-December, Vol. 22, No. 3, 2020

256

selling, referent power, cognitive style, trust, empowering, authority, leadership traits, co- ercive power, legitimate power, encouraging, self-management, initiating structure, and consideration styles. See Figure 2 for the dis- tribution of studies according to the style.

Concerning the KM activities, Figure 3 also shows that 27 (54%) of the included pa- pers studied the KM activities in general, 19 (38%) knowledge sharing, 1 (2%) knowledge creation and application, 1 (2%) knowledge transfer, 1 (2%) knowledge acquisition, and 1 (2%) looked at knowledge slack, absorptive capacity, and tacitness.

Paper’s Contents Summary Transformational leadership

Regarding the systemic review’s ques- tion concerning the influence of leadership styles and roles on KM, the authors found in 12 studies that transformational leadership had a positive, significant correlation with the entire KM capability and its various ac- tivities, such as knowledge creation, transfer, utilization, retention, integration, and others (Aung and Vinitwatanakhun, 2018; Farooqi,

Gohar, Nazish and Ahmad, 2017; Uddin, Fan and Das, 2017; Nouri, Mousavi and Soltan, 2016; Hayat, Maleki Hasanvand, Nikakhlag and Dehghani, 2015; Birasnav, 2014; Gelard, Boroumand and Mohammadi, 2014; Noruzy, Dalfard, Azhdar, Nazari-Shirkouhi and Re-

zazadeh, 2013; Allameh, Babaei, Chitsaz and Gharibpoor, 2012; Analoui, Doloriert and Sambrook, 2012; Nguyen and Mohamed, 2011; Crawford, 2005). Another study found that transformational leadership had a posi- tive moderating effect on the relationship be- tween KM and organizational effectiveness (Chi, Lan, and Dorjgotov, 2012).

On the other hand, the effects of trans- formational leadership were studied on par- ticular KM activities. Eight studies into the effect of transformational leadership on knowledge sharing found that transforma- tional leadership had a direct, significant, and positive impact on knowledge sharing (Al-Husseini and Elbeltagi, 2018; Park and Kim, 2018; Le and Lei, 2017; Mahmood and Khattak, 2017; Imdad Ullah, Bin Ab Hamid and Shahzad, 2016; Al-Husseini and Dosa, 2016; Akpotu and Jasmine, 2013; Mushtaq

*Some studies have included more than one leadership styles Figure 2: Relevant papers’ distribution according to leadership roles and styles*

Al Amiri et al

257

and Bokhari, 2011). Another study found a significant relationship of transformational leadership with the internal component of knowledge sharing (Chen and Barry, 2006).

Some components of transformational leadership, particularly individual’s consid- eration and individual’s inspirational impact positively on knowledge sharing activities, while the intellectual stimulation and inspira- tional motivation do not significantly encour- age activities related to knowledge sharing (Rawung, Wuryaningrat, and Elvinita, 2015). Furthermore, the idealized influence is sig- nificant only when considered with social- ization, the intellectual stimulation leadership is significantly correlated with all the dimen- sions of knowledge sharing (socialization, externalization, combination, and internal- ization), and the individualized consideration is significant for knowledge externalization (Bradshaw, Chebbi, and Oztel, 2015).

Furthermore, a few studies revealed that transformational leadership had a positive ef- fect on negotiation, which is a component of knowledge acquisition (Politis, 2001), while leadership constructs including emotional in- telligence, leadership traits, and transforma- tion team (i.e. a team of experts who lead a project) significantly influence the transfer of

knowledge (İdris, Ali, and Godwin, 2015) and transformational leadership positively affects all the strategic variables, including knowl- edge slack, absorptive capacity, and tacit- ness directly and indirectly (Garcı´a-Morales, Llore´ns-Montes, and Verdu´-Jover, 2008).

Transactional leadership Transactional leadership, another com-

mon leadership style, was found in four stud- ies has a significant, positive relationship with KM’s capabilities and activities (Farooqi, Go- har, Nazish, and Ahmad, 2017; Ghanbari and Abedzadeh, 2016; Hayat, Maleki Hasanvand, Nikakhlag and Dehghani, 2015; Analoui, Doloriert, and Sambrook, 2012; Nguyen and Mohamed, 2011). Furthermore, transactional leadership has a significant positive relation- ship with particular components of KM, which are knowledge’s externalization and internalization (Allameh, Babaei, Chitsaz, and Gharibpoor, 2012), and knowledge shar- ing (Hussain, Abbas, Lei, Haider, and Akram, 2017).

On the other hand, particular compo- nents of transactional leadership were found to positively affect knowledge management activities. Contingent rewards, one of the transactional dimensions, was found to have

Figure 3: Relevant papers’ distribution according to the KM’s activities and capabilities

Gadjah Mada International Journal of Business – September-December, Vol. 22, No. 3, 2020

258

a positive correlation with knowledge sharing (Farooq, Hanif, and Khan, 2018), with social- ization, and combination (Bradshaw, Chebbi, and Oztel, 2015), and with both internal and external knowledge sharing with customers (Chen and Barry, 2006). Also, the initiating structure, one of the transactional dimen- sions, was found to be positively correlated with communication and the problem of un- derstanding the components of knowledge acquisition, and negatively correlated with the personal traits, organization, and negotia- tion (Politis, 2001).

A few studies found no significant re- lationship between transactional leadership and KM (Aung and Vinitwatanakhun 2018; Crawford, 2005), transactional leadership with conversion and socialization (Allameh, Babaei, Chitsaz, and Gharibpoor, 2012), and the dimensions of the contingent reward with knowledge sharing (Rawung, Wuryanin- grat, and Elvinita, 2015).

Other Leadership Styles Regarding knowledge leadership, evi-

dence was found that knowledge-oriented leadership had a positive effect on KM (Jad et al., 2017; Sadeghi and Rad, 2018; Donate and De Pablo, 2015), and it also had positive ef- fects on knowledge creation and application (Safari and Azadehdel, 2015).

About the other leadership styles, some papers revealed that leadership, in general, correlated with KM (Kafashpoor, Shakoori, and Sadeghian, 2013) and had a positive moderating effect on the relationship be- tween knowledge sharing and organization- al learning (Khalid and Ahmed, 2015), while leadership behavior (i.e. leadership style, pro- fessional authority, and counseling skills) had a positive relation with KM (Tang, 2017). Furthermore, one study inferred that senior

managers’ attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control all had a posi- tive influence on the intention to encourage knowledge-sharing, which in turn is the main determinant of corporate knowledge-sharing behavior (Lin and Lee, 2004). Additionally, the strategic dimension of leadership had a positive relationship with the success of KM practices (Mas -Machuca, 2014).

Regarding the directive, participative, and supportive leadership styles, they had minor positive influences on KM (Aldulaimi, 2015). One prior study revealed that the di- rective and supportive styles had negative associations with KM practices, while the consulting and delegating styles had signifi- cant positive relationships with KM practices (Singh, 2008).

Regarding leadership powers, the ex- pert power had positive effects on both knowledge’s acquisition and dissemination, the reward power had a positive effect on knowledge dissemination in small firms, the legitimate power had a negative effect on knowledge acquisition, the coercive power had only a detrimental effect in small orga- nizations, whereas the referent power did not affect anything in the knowledge-based con- text (Jayasingam, Ansari, and Jantan, 2010).

The remaining papers studied a vari- ety of individual leadership styles, the men- tor leadership style was positively related to knowledge sharing behavior, whereas the fa- cilitator leadership style was not found to be related to knowledge sharing behavior (Jah- ani, Ramayah, and Effendi, 2011), the cogni- tive styles (i.e. radical and innovative-collab- orator styles) had a negative impact on KM practices; while the cognitive adaptor style had a positive impact on KM practices (Jain and Jeppesen, 2013), the leader-member ex- change (LMX) affected knowledge sharing

Al Amiri et al

259

and performance positively and meaningfully (Sharifkhani, Pool, and Asian, 2016), the tell- ing, selling, participating, and delegating styles had a significant influence on KM (Pringga- bayu and Ramdlany, 2017), the democratic style affected KM activities more successfully in small enterprises and enterprises oriented toward international markets, whereas the autocratic style affected KM more in large enterprises (Miloloža, 2018), the command leadership style had a great effect on the KM process, while the supportive leadership style positively and significantly affected three aspec

Collepals.com Plagiarism Free Papers

Are you looking for custom essay writing service or even dissertation writing services? Just request for our write my paper service, and we'll match you with the best essay writer in your subject! With an exceptional team of professional academic experts in a wide range of subjects, we can guarantee you an unrivaled quality of custom-written papers.

Get ZERO PLAGIARISM, HUMAN WRITTEN ESSAYS

Why Hire Collepals.com writers to do your paper?

Quality- We are experienced and have access to ample research materials.

We write plagiarism Free Content

Confidential- We never share or sell your personal information to third parties.

Support-Chat with us today! We are always waiting to answer all your questions.