Title: Exploring the impact of leader knowledge sharing on leader-rated employee performance: a curvilinear effect moderated by employee humility

Authors: Ranxin Liao; Ran Li; Xiji Zhu; Wei Liu; Zhe Shang

Addresses: Business School, Hitotsubashi University, 2-1 Naka, Kunitachi, Tokyo 1868601, Japan ' Business School, Beijing Normal University, No. 19, Xinjiekouwai Street, Haidian District, Beijing 100875, China ' Business School, Hitotsubashi University, 2-1 Naka, Kunitachi, Tokyo 1868601, Japan ' Business School, Central University of Finance and Economics, 39 South College Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100081, China ' School of Government, Beijing Normal University, No. 19, Xinjiekouwai St, Haidian District, Beijing 100875, China

Abstract: In the dynamic workplace landscape, leaders serve as crucial knowledge providers, significantly contributing to the growth and development of their employees. While the outcomes of knowledge sharing are well-documented, most studies have predominantly focused on the perspective of knowledge recipients, leaving a gap in understanding knowledge sharing from the provider's standpoint. Adopting a provider-centric approach, our paper examines the influence of leader knowledge sharing on leader-rated employee performance with a three-wave survey on 541 employees and their leaders across 22 teams. Grounded in self-perception theory and accounting for the 'too-much-of-a-good-thing' effect, we propose and empirically test an inverted U-shaped relationship between leader knowledge sharing and leader-rated employee performance (linear: β = 0.394, R² = 0.269; quadratic: β = -0.156, R² = 0.275). We also introduce a characteristic of recipients, i.e., employee humility, as an important moderator in this relationship (linear: β = 0.290; quadratic: β = 0.340; R² = 0.287), such that the inverted U-shaped pattern is more pronounced when employee humility is low but turns out to be a positive linear relationship with increasing slope for highly humble employees. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed with valuable insights for both academia and practitioners.

Keywords: leader knowledge sharing; employee performance; self-perception theory; too-much-of-a-good-thing; humility.

DOI: 10.1504/IJKMS.2025.149512

International Journal of Knowledge Management Studies, 2025 Vol.16 No.3, pp.263 - 288

Received: 10 Oct 2024
Accepted: 28 Apr 2025
Published online: 04 Nov 2025 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article