The Relationship between Servant Leadership, Perceived

Organizational Climate, and Knowledge Sharing Quality in

Public Sector:

The Moderating Effect of Enjoyment in Sharing Knowledge

Linda LinChin Lin

1,2

, Nguyen Thi Hong Nhung

1,2

and Pi-Chuan Shen

1,2

Institute of Business Administration Kun Shan University, Kunda Rd, Yongkang Dist., Taiwan

Department of Business Administration, Kun Shan University, Yongkang Dist, Taiwan

Keywords: Knowledge Sharing Quality, Perceived Organizational Climate, Servant Leadership, Public Organizations,

Enjoyment in Sharing Knowledge.

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to explore the moderating effect of enjoyment in sharing knowledge to the

association of perceived organizational climate and servant leadership towards knowledge sharing quality in

the nature context of public sector. The significant role of servant leadership style is examined to increase

the quality of knowledge sharing among public servants. Besides, the relationship between organizational

climate and sharing knowledge culture in business performance also re-investigated under the perceived

empathy, courage and support from civil servants’ perspectives. The survey conducted within Vietnamese

public organizations- in which the impact of servant leadership has not raised much concerns from

researchers. Overall, these empirical study’s results is expected to contribute to implications on knowledge

management in the public organizations, enhancing critical roles of servant leadership associated with

appraising personal motivation. This aims to enrich more and more culture of sharing knowledge as well as

to pave the way for the success of knowledge management strategy within the public context.

1 INTRODUCTION

Previous research showed that organization climate

is both enabler and barriers of knowledge sharing

(Amayah, 2013). However, compared to private

sector, there are not many researches focused on

examining the effectiveness of knowledge sharing

practices in public sector (Tangaraja et al., 2015).

Hence, we also purpose to further investigate the

relationship of perceived organizational climate and

sharing knowledge quality of co-workers using

evidences from an emerging country such as

Vietnam-in which civil servants always try to

consolidate their vital positions in creating society’s

welfare and properties (Painter, 2006)

The recent research has shown that the number

of related studies about of servant leadership on

knowledge sharing is also very limited (Tuan, 2016).

Different from the private sector, public sector

organization is mainly to serve the people with non-

profit goals and the environment of these

organization is less favourable for knowledge

sharing compared with private businesses (Willem

and Buelens, 2007). Thus, in this research we would

like to examine the use of servant leadership in

enhancing the values of knowledge sharing as well

as contributes to the effectiveness of knowledge

management within public sector organizations.

From that, the roles of servant leadership should be

enhanced to further enrich the knowledge sharing

quality, then to pave the way for knowledge

management process within public organizations.

In addition, a study has explored that the

enjoyment in sharing with other people is one of the

most significant motivational determinants which

have positive impacts on the effectiveness of

knowledge shared among employees in companies.

Especially, employees working in public

organizations are highly motivated by intrinsic

factors rather than outside rewards (Lin, 2007). In

this research paper, we address a research approach

in examining the essential role of enjoyment in

sharing knowledge as a moderator variable in this

study. This study partly adopts the same measuring

Lin, L., Nhung, N. and Shen, P.

The Relationship between Servant Leadership, Perceived Organizational Climate, and Knowledge Sharing Quality in Public Sector: The Moderating Effect of Enjoyment in Sharing Knowledge.

DOI: 10.5220/0008489801570162

In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Entrepreneurship and Business Management (ICEBM Untar 2018), pages 157-162

ISBN: 978-989-758-363-6

157

items used in the research (Yu et al., 2010) for

moderator variable that is enjoying sharing

knowledge with others.

2 LITERATURE REVIEWS

2.1 Knowledge Sharing in Public

Sector

The knowledge sharing in public sector becoming

more and more important in these organizations

(Amayah, 2013) since public sectors are knowledge-

intensive organizations, and they always need an

effective knowledge sharing to maximize the benefit

of knowledge (Willem and Buelens, 2007).

Comparing to the knowledge sharing in private

sector, knowledge sharing in public sector was also

demonstrated by many similarities and differences in

characteristic. Moreover, previous studies found that

the organization commitments in public sector are

lower and become the bad environment to foster

knowledge sharing (Willem and Buelens, 2007).

Many other researches also emphasized and shared

the same views (Amayah, 2013; Chen and Hsieh,

2015; Mkhize, 2015; Yesil, 2014; Yusof et al.,2012).

2.2 Servant Leadership

A research has shown out the significance of the

leadership in which servant leadership is extremely

appropriate with the context of public sector

organization (Tuan, 2016). Nevertheless, the number

of related studies examined the effects of servant

leadership on knowledge sharing, particularly

examining in these public organizations is still very

limited. Therefore, in this research paper we are

objectively concentrating on the relationship of

servant leadership toward knowledge sharing quality

among public servants at the individual level. Thus,

we have hypothesis:

H1: Servant leadership has a positive relationship

with knowledge sharing quality among employees in

Public organizations.

2.3 Perceived Organizational Climate

In this study, we would like to re-confirm how

perceived organizational climate associates with

knowledge sharing in public sector. Furthermore, we

hope the support of these hypotheses could do the

premise for the hypotheses of the interaction effects

of intrinsic personal motivation to the organizational

climate-knowledge sharing relationship in public

environment in the later part. Thus, in this part we

suggest 3 hypotheses as follows:

H2a: The perceived organizational support has a

positive relationship with knowledge sharing quality

in public organizations.

H2b: The perceived organizational empathy has a

positive relationship with knowledge sharing quality

in public organizations.

H2c: The perceived organizational courage has a

positive relationship with knowledge sharing quality

in public organization.

2.4 Enjoyment in Sharing Knowledge

The Enjoyment in sharing knowledge (called as

enjoyment in helping others in some previous

researches) is one intrinsic motivated factor which is

represented whenever the employees themselves

have engaged and volunteering emotions; they feel

good to share knowledge at the aim to help their co-

workers (Yu et al., 2010).

2.4.1 In the Servant Leadership-knowledge

Sharing Quality Relation

We supposed that intrinsic motivation under the

perspective of “Enjoyment in sharing knowledge”

will reinforce the positive association between

Servant leadership and Knowledge sharing quality in

the public context. Higher intrinsic factor is

motivated, the stronger impacts of Servant

leadership on knowledge sharing quality among

public employees is. Thus, we have another

hypothesis as follows:

H3: Enjoyment in sharing knowledge will have

positive moderating effects on the Servant

Leadership- Knowledge sharing quality relation.

2.4.2 In the Perceived Organizational

Climate-knowledge Sharing Relation

Previous studies already showed that in firms,

employee tends to retain their knowledge because

he/she may be anxious of losing his/her competitive

advantages. And that person only shares knowledge

when he/she gets some motivations from obvious

perceived benefits (Bock et al., 2005; Lin, 2007). A

number of researches also proved that intrinsic

motivational factors can nurture the organizational

culture of sharing knowledge among employees

(Bock et al., 2005; Cabrera and Cabrera, 2005).

Furthermore, a working climate of sharing will have

ICEBM Untar 2018 - International Conference on Entrepreneurship and Business Management (ICEBM) Untar

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a positive influence on knowledge sharing

effectiveness among co-workers (Yang, 2007).

From the perspectives of Enjoyment in sharing

knowledge, we suggested it played as moderator

variable interacting with perceived organizational

climate factors in enhancing the quality of

knowledge sharing in public organizations.

Therefore, we developed three following

hypotheses:

H4a: Enjoyment in sharing knowledge will have a

positive moderating effect on the relationship

between Perceived organizational support and

Knowledge sharing quality.

H4b: Enjoyment in sharing knowledge will have a

positive moderating effect on the relationship

between Perceived organizational empathy and

Knowledge sharing quality.

H4c: Enjoyment in sharing knowledge will have a

positive moderating effect on the relationship

between Perceived organizational courage and

Knowledge sharing quality.

3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Knowledge sharing quality is dependent variable,

and also, there are 5 measuring constructs (servant

leadership, perceived organizational climate factors

including: support, empathy, courage; and

enjoyment in sharing knowledge) consisting of total

4 independent variables and 1 moderator variable. In

this model, we will examine the servant leadership

impacts as it plays moderating role between the

relationship of perceived organizational climate and

knowledge sharing quality in public sector.

3.1 Measurements

Enjoyment in sharing knowledge: The construct of

Enjoyment in sharing knowledge in this research

paper was examined base on the items of from study

of Yu et al., (2010); Perceived organizational

climate: Adapting from research of Brian D. Janz

and Pattarawan Prasarnphanich (2003) and Zarraga

and Bonache (2003); Servant Leadership: We

adapted the questionnaires from research of Mark G.

Ehrhart (2004) with 14 measuring items.;

Knowledge Sharing: We used the questionnaires

from research of Chiu et al., (2006) and Chang et al.,

(2012), measuring the quality of knowledge sharing

by six following measured items.

4 RESEARCH ANALYSIS

4.1 Descriptive Data Analysis

4.1.1 Data Collection

By sharing survey on the Internet among social

community as well as sending questionnaire papers

directly to every participant, we collected in total of

418 surveyed samples. These participants are

workers, employees and official staffs who did and

have been working in Vietnamese organizations in

different fields in public sectors. For the final

survey, 391 samples; the study’s respondent rate is

relatively high with approximately 93.45% of

distributed surveys.

4.1.2 Characteristics of Respondents

It’s shown that almost 59.3% of the respondents are

female; 49.6% respondents’ age range from 31-40

years old. Approximately 47.3% percent of

respondents have experience in working in public

sector from 3 to 10 years, and more than 32.2%

percent of respondents have 10-20 years of

experience. The majority of survey responded

population are civil servants working in local

government (32.7%), followed by officials working

in education sectors (17.6%).

4.1.3 Regression Analysis for Model 1:

Control Variables – Knowledge

Sharing Relation

The model 1 does not explain any significant

amount of variance in knowledge sharing, because

all criteria are not accepted, F-test insignificant

(smaller than 4), R

=0.6%. The “gender”, “age” and

“tenure” groups insignificantly influence on

dependent variable (due to the insignificant

coefficient β). Overall, in this study the effect of

control variable on the whole model is not

remarkable.

4.1.4 Regression Analysis for Model 2:

Servant Leadership-knowledge

Sharing Quality Relationship

In model 2, we found that the R

equals to 0.182

with the adjusted R

is 0.173. This means that the

linear regression explains 18.2 % of the variance.

The F-test of model 2 is highly significant

(F=21.439, with p<0.001), which means the

regression model explains a significant amount of

variance in dependent variable as knowledge

The Relationship between Servant Leadership, Perceived Organizational Climate, and Knowledge Sharing Quality in Public Sector: The

Moderating Effect of Enjoyment in Sharing Knowledge

159

sharing. The independent variable “Servant

leadership” statistically significant in predicting

knowledge sharing in public organizations with the

coefficient β = 0.420*** (t-value = 9.155, p <

0.001).

Durbin-Watson test for auto-correlation test: d =

1.842, which is between the two critical values of

1.5 < d < 2.5. Therefore, we can assume that there is

no linear auto-correlation in our multiple regression

data. For the multi-collinearity test in our multiple

regression model, the VIF ranges from 1.019 to

1.174. It implies that some variables in model might

be slightly correlated, however VIF is still smaller

than 3, so that it is accepted. From these statistical

analyses, we proved that Hypothesis 1 is supported.

4.1.5 Regression Analysis for Model 3:

Perceived Organizational

Climate-knowledge Sharing Quality

Relationship

In model 3, we combined hypothesizes 2a, 2b, 2c

together at the aim to test the positive impact of

perceived organizational climate on knowledge

sharing quality in public organizations. This model

consists of multiple independent variables

(perceived organizational support, empathy and

courage) to predict dependent variable “knowledge

sharing quality”.

We also adopt the enter method and found that

the model’s overall significance effect of

organizational climate on knowledge sharing in

public sector is quietly high with F-value = 14.386

(p-value < 0.001) with R

= 18.4% variance

explained. There is also no first order linear auto-

correlation in multiple regression data of this model

(d = 1.852). The multi-collinearity test’s result is

very low; the VIF just ranges from 1.026 to 1.178.

In term of every independent variable in model

3, it is noted that the perceived organizational

support with β = 0.273*** (t-value = 5.484, p <

0.001) and the perceived organizational empathy

with β = 0.233*** (t-value = 4.733, p < 0.001) had

statistically significant influenced on the quality of

knowledge sharing. Meanwhile, the perceived

organizational courage had no significantly impacted

on knowledge sharing quality due to its β = 0.065 (t-

value is 1.389 smaller than 1.96).

Therefore, the Hypothesizes H2a and H2b are

supported, H2c is not supported.

4.1.6 Regression Analysis for Model 4

Based on the results for model 4, it proved that with

F-test is relatively high significant (F-value =19.121,

p < 0.001), the multiple regression has explained for

26.6% of variance (R

= 0.259, adjusted R

is 0.245).

Based on the distributed weighted coefficient (β)

of each explaining variable, the model 4’s results re-

affirmed the results of above hypothesizes that

servant leadership, the perceived of organizational

support and empathy have positive significance in

the relationship with knowledge sharing quality

within public sectors. Meanwhile, the perceived

organizational courage is statistically insignificant

with knowledge sharing quality. The coefficient of

servant leadership is the highest one (β = 0.303***,

p < 0.001, t-value = 6.244), it also means that

compared to perceived organizational climate

factors, servant leadership has more positive

influence on the quality of knowledge shared among

employees in public organizations.

4.2 Regression Analysis of Moderating

Hypothesis

4.2.1 Moderation Effect of Enjoyment in

Sharing Knowledge on the

Relationship between Servant

Leadership (SL) and Knowledge

Sharing Quality (KSQ)

Hypothesis 3 proposed that Enjoyment in sharing

knowledge positively moderates the relationship

between servant leadership and knowledge sharing

quality in public sector. Firstly, the model has a

good fitness because the value of F-test is highly

significant equals to 35.03 (p< 0.001) with R

equals

to 21.36 % explained variance. Secondly, in the

main effects, the dependent variable had a positive

relation to independent variable (β = 0.409,

statistically significant at p<.001 level) and the

moderator variable of intrinsic motivation (β =

0.163***). The result is also shown in coefficient for

the interaction effect become positively (β =0.126, at

level of significant is p<.01).

Hypothesis 3 is supported. It means that the more

enjoyment in sharing knowledge is increased, the

stronger the positive relationship between servant

leadership and knowledge sharing quality become.

4.2.2 Moderation Effect of Enjoyment in

Sharing Knowledge on the

Relationship between Perceived

Organization Support (POS) and

Knowledge Sharing Quality (KSQ):

This regression model has a good fitness because the

value of the overall significance criteria of F-value is

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22.79 (p< 0.001) with R

= 15 %. For the main

effects, the knowledge sharing had a positive

relation to independent variable (β = 0.317***) and

the moderator variable of intrinsic motivation (β =

0.163***). The result also shown in coefficient for

the interaction effect become positively (β =0.088, at

level of significant is p<.01).

Hypothesis 4a is supported. The more enjoying

sharing knowledge is motivated by employees, the

stronger the positive relationship between perceived

organization support and knowledge sharing quality

become.

4.2.3 Moderating Effect of Enjoyment in

Sharing Knowledge on the

Relationship between Perceived

Organization Empathy (POE) and

Knowledge Sharing Quality (KSQ)

Hypothesis H4b examines the moderating effect of

Enjoyment in sharing knowledge to the association

of perceived organizational empathy and the quality

of knowledge sharing in public organization. The F-

value = 19.64, significant level of 0.001, R

accepted

with 13.2% of variance explained level. The

interaction effect has a significantly positive

coefficient β = 0.1 at p-value <0.05. Thus, the

hypothesis H4b is also supported.

4.2.4 Moderation Effect of Enjoyment in

Sharing Knowledge on the

Relationship between Perceived

Organizational Courage and

Knowledge Sharing Quality

Hypothesis 4c was developed based on the

moderating effect of Enjoyment in sharing

knowledge to the perceived organizational courage-

knowledge sharing quality relation. H4c is not

supported. The F-test is satisfied with the tolerance

limit with F-value higher than 4, p-value <0.001, the

is 4.9% quite low, the slope of interaction effect

is not significant (β = 0.027, p-value >0.1).

Therefore, there is no significant evidence

improving the moderator role of Enjoyment in

sharing knowledge toward the relationship of

perceived organizational courage and knowledge

sharing quality in public sectors.

5 CONCLUSION AND

DISCUSSION

5.1 Conclusion and Discussion

The first hypothesis (H1) is supported when

explaining the significantly positive influence of

Servant leadership on knowledge sharing quality

practiced in public sector. This result explored

Servant leadership’s role in affecting to the quality

of sharing knowledge, it is also in accordance with

the Vietnamese scholar’s perspectives (Luu Trong

Tuan, 2016b) in which he approved that Servant

leadership ultimately fostered the knowledge sharing

in public sector’s working environment. In prior

researches, Servant leadership does not raise much

concerns as regarded as an independent explaining

variables for knowledge sharing effectiveness in

business areas. Thus, this study’s finding also fill in

gaps of the literatures of knowledge sharing

management (Chen and Hsieh, 2015; de Vries et al.,

2006; Lam and Lambermont-Ford, 2010).

Secondly, based on literature reviews, we feel a

little confused, thereby we find out different

conclusions about the impacts of organizational

climate’s determinants on knowledge sharing in the

context of business (Chen and Huang, 2007) (Lin

and Lee, 2006). That is also a reason for us to be

more determined in re-investigating organizational

climate roles, carried out in public sectors.

According to empirical results of hypotheses H2a,

H2b, H2c, we found that the perceived

organizational support and empathy factors created

in organizations tend to have more positive impacts

on public servant’s sharing knowledge quality and

effectiveness. Meanwhile, the perceived

organizational courage is not significant enough in

predicting knowledge sharing quality among co-

workers. We had founded that higher level of

enjoyment in sharing knowledge with co-workers

which individually servant employee motivated from

servant leadership and organizational supporting and

empathy behavioural climate will positively

strengthen the knowledge sharing activities and

initiate the effectiveness of knowledge management

system of public organization.

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