Linking Knowledge Sharing and Employee Creativity: Decomposing Knowledge Mode and Improving the Measure of Tacit Knowledge Sharing

Knowledge management (KM) has long been theorized as an important source of organizational competitive advantage. By developing dynamic capability of leveraging intellectual assets, an organization is expected to be able to innovatively respond to changing environment. However, the research streams of creativity and innovation on one hand and KM on the other hand have been surprisingly separate over the last decades. Specifying the sharing of two modes of knowledge, this study proposes and verifies a theoretical model linking creative process engagement with individual creativity via the mechanisms of tacit and explicit knowledge sharing. Using a two-wave survey design, we collected data from a sample of 194 employees and their supervisors. The results showed that three types of specific engagement in creative activities (i.e., problem identification, information searching and encoding, and idea generation) differentially and interactively affect employees’ creative behavior, in which processes tacit knowledge sharing and explicit knowledge sharing played different roles. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.