The Mediator Role of Leadership in the Relationship Between Knowledge Management and the Relationship Between Employees

According to Nonaka, companies must innovate through knowledge. Nevertheless, knowledge acquisition, application and sharing often require a reorganization of the company as well as all the people who constitute it. There is some empiric proof that good employee relations in developments that give rise to high levels of job satisfaction positively influences organisational performance. Thus, it is of utmost importance to study the influence of knowledge management practices in employee relations and on the company work environment. At the same time, leadership also may play an important role by enabling knowledge transfer and assuring a good human resource quality, thus fostering competitiveness. This study tries to identify the influence of knowledge (acquisition and application) and its sharing in "human resource quality relations" in SMEs. Thus, applying a questionnaire to 187 companies considered "SMEs leaders" in Portugal, this study, through a structural equation model, shows that knowledge management has a positive effect on Employee Relations Quality and Leadership has a mediating and positive effect in this relation. This paper, through a significant sample of SMEs, allows has to study the impact of KM practices in the quality of employee relations. This paper further investigates the relation between knowledge sharing and the ability to create a high level of quality of human resources.