Psychological Safety as a Pathway Linking Transformational Leadership to Knowledge Sharing

Abstract

This paper analyzes psychological safety as a key process linking transformational leadership to employee knowledge sharing. Although transformational leadership is closely linked to teamwork and participation, workers can also withhold information due to fear of adversarial judgment, criticism, or demotion. Data collection employed a quantitative, explanatory, time-lagged survey design, with two waves of data collected among employees in knowledge-intensive service environments.  Time 1 was used to measure transformational leadership, whereas Time 2 was used to measure psychological safety and knowledge sharing. Bootstrapped mediation test using structural modeling revealed that transformational leadership is a positive predictor of psychological safety and psychological safety is a positive predictor of knowledge sharing. Knowledge sharing is also directly positively related to transformational leadership. The psychological safety indirect effect is substantive, affirming the mediation and showing that leadership is translated into regular knowledge sharing, particularly when people's risk is minimized.  Its contributions to the body of theory and practice include a better understanding of the psychological mechanism that leadership influences knowledge behaviors and a better understanding of the leadership that leads to the creation of psychologically safe climates that reinforce the teams based on knowledge sharing.