Leadership and knowledge sharing in teams: The effects of the leader's communicative framing of team goals

Capitalizing on team members' knowledge resources is one of the key determinants of the success of a work team, and team leaders play an important role in cultivating team members' motivation to share their knowledge with each other. This study examined the effects of a leader's communicative framing of team goals on individuals' knowledge-sharing intention in a team setting. An experimental study with a 2 (leader's regulatory focus: promotion vs. prevention) X 2 (leader's reward focus: process vs. outcome) factorial design revealed that the leader's process-based reward framing leads to a significantly higher level of knowledge sharing intention than the leader's outcome-based reward framing. This result suggests that a leader's communicative framing that emphasizes and incentivizes collaborative processes as opposed to the team's end outcomes is more likely to encourage team knowledge sharing.