The Influence of Servant Leadership on Knowledge Sharing and Knowledge Hiding: The Mediating Role of Trust in Leader
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54938/ijemdss.2026.05.2.713Keywords:
A servant's leadership style, knowledge hiding, knowledge sharing, trust in leader, social exchange theory, PakistanAbstract
Based on social exchange theory, this study explores servant leadership's impact on two employee behaviors: Knowledge hiding and Knowledge sharing, and examines the psychological mechanism between servant leadership and these two behaviors as trust in leader. A multi-item scale, validated with teaching staff of private sector schools (N = 312), was used to collect data. The measurement model showed reliability and had convergent and discriminant validity and hypotheses were tested using Hayes' PROCESS macro. Results indicate that servant leadership decreases knowledge hiding and increases both knowledge sharing and trust in leader, which in turn decreases knowledge hiding and increases knowledge sharing. All seven hypothesized relationships were confirmed with both the servant leadership–trust in the leader link and the trust in leader–knowledge sharing/hiding links being significant. The findings extend servant leadership and knowledge-management scholarship by giving further depth to the understanding of how trust contributes to minimizing knowledge hiding and fostering knowledge sharing in the context of servant leadership, and providing practical guidance for building a knowledge sharing culture in education institutions.
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