Enticing high performers to stay and share their knowledge: The importance of trust in leader

• Published date: 01 July 2019
• Author: Seckyoung Loretta Kim
• Date: 01 July 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21955

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Enticing high performers to stay and share their knowledge:

The importance of trust in leader

Seckyoung Loretta Kim

College of Business Administration, Incheon National University, Incheon, South Korea (ROK)

Correspondence

Seckyoung Loretta Kim, College of Business Administration, Incheon National University, 119 Academy-ro, Yeonsu-gu, Incheon, South Korea (ROK).

Email: loretta@inu.ac.kr

Funding information

Incheon National University (International Cooperative) Research Grant in 2017

1|INTRODUCTION

To remain effective in the competitive and dynamic business environ-

ment, organizations must make efforts to encourage employees to

stay and share their knowledge (Allen, Van Scotter, & Onondo, 2004;

Wang & Noe, 2010). Although organizations may develop and acquire

new technology or processes to obtain competitive advantages, these

cannot be effectively implemented when adequate human capital is

lacking (Allen et al., 2004; Cable & Turban, 2003). Recognizing the

importance of retaining valuable employees, numerous studies have

examined various factors that may prevent them from leaving the

organization (Chen, Ployhart, Thomas, Anderson, & Bliese, 2011;

Dane & Brummel, 2013; Regts & Molleman, 2013). For example, prior

research has noted personal characteristics, job satisfaction, compen-

sation, leadership, coworker, and stress factors as antecedents of

turnover or turnover intention (Dane & Brummel, 2013; Griffeth,

Hom, & Gaertner, 2000; Waldman, Carter, & Hom, 2015). As turnover

intention tends to lead to actual turnover and other negative organiza-

tional outcomes (Chang, Wang, & Huang, 2013), this research investi-

gates what factors affect employees' turnover intention.

Although the need to retain talented employees is an important

issue, doing so may not be sufficientto increase an organization's com-

petitive advantages(Bartlett & Ghoshal, 2002). Organizations must find

the means to transfer the skills and knowledge of valuable employees

and make these accessible and useful in the workplace as a whole

(Bartlett & Ghoshal, 2002; Wang & Noe, 2010). As a core component

of knowledge management, knowledge sharing,which is referred to as

individuals' “sharing of task-relevant ideas, information, and sugges-

tions with each other”(Srivastava, Bartol, & Locke, 2006, p. 1241), is

essential to accumulate knowledge stocks of organization (Wang &

Noe, 2010). From this view, it is important to determine the factors

that may influence employees' turnover intention and knowledge-

sharing behaviors. However, thus far, prior research has not explored

common factors. To address the gap in the literature, this research

applies social exchange theory and attempts to investigate when

employees reduce their turnover intention and share their valuable

knowledge with others. Specifically, this study examines relational fac-

tors such as trust in multiple sources—leaders and coworkers—as indi-

viduals are involvedin social and economic exchange relationships with

these key actorsin the workplace (Felps et al., 2009).

Trust, defined as “the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to

the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other

will perform a particular action important to the trustor”(Mayer,

Davis, & Schoorman, 1995, p. 712), has been widely examined as an

antecedent of employee positive attitudes and behaviors (Chughtai,

Byrne, & Flood, 2015; Fulmer & Gelfand, 2012; van der Werff &

Buckley, 2017). As individuals may not be able to build a social

exchange relationship when trust is lacking, trust can be viewed as a

key variable in predicting the quality of social exchange relationships

(Colquitt, Scott, & LePine, 2007). Researchers have demonstrated the

effects of trust on a variety of behavioral and performance outcomes,

such as communication, organizational citizenship behavior, effort,

conflict, negotiation behaviors, individual performance, and group per-

formance (Dirks & Ferrin, 2001; van der Werff & Buckley, 2017). From

these observations, trust in leaders and coworkers is a critical factor

regarding employees' turnover intention and knowledge sharing. Here,

based on social exchange theory, employees who trust their key

actors are likely to exhibit positive attitudes and behaviors in return.

Despite the favorable outcomes, the benefits of trust may not be

identical for all employees.

In this regard, individual factors may moderate the trust–outcome

relationship. Among various factors, this research selected employees'

task performance as a moderator as high-performing and low-

performing employees may value the benefits of trust differently.

Organizations focus their efforts on reducing turnover intention;how-

ever, not all turnover is detrimental. This depends on “who leaves and

DOI: 10.1002/hrm.21955

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