Team knowledge exchange: How and when does transformational leadership have an effect?

• Author: Yanghua Jin,Mo Wang,Yixuan Li,Anne Burmeister,Junqi Shi
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2411
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Date: 01 January 2020

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Team knowledge exchange: How and when does

transformational leadership have an effect?

Anne Burmeister

1

|Yixuan Li

2

|Mo Wang

3

|Junqi Shi

4

|Yanghua Jin

5

1

Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus

University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands

2

Krannert School of Management, Purdue

University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

3

Department of Management, Warrington

College of Business, University of Florida,

Gainesville, Florida, USA

4

School of Management, Zhejiang University,

Hangzhou, China

5

School of Business Administration, Zhejiang

Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China

Correspondence

Yanghua Jin, School of Business

Administration, Zhejiang Gongshang

University, Hangzhou 310018, China.

Email: jinyanghua@163.com

Summary

In this study, we examined how and when transformational leadership affected team

knowledge exchange. Taking a goal pursuit perspective, we hypothesized two parallel

mediating mechanisms—team knowledge goal generation and team knowledge goal

striving—linking transformational leadership to team knowledge exchange. In addi-

tion, we investigated whether team‐level team‐member exchange served as a bound-

ary condition that qualified the effects of transformational leadership on team

knowledge goal generation and striving. We tested our hypotheses using time‐

lagged data from 118 work teams of a large Chinese manufacturing firm. Our findings

provided support for the proposed parallel mediating mechanisms (i.e., team knowl-

edge goal generation and team knowledge goal striving) that linked transformational

leadership to team knowledge exchange. In addition, we found that team‐level team‐

member exchange could strengthen the positive effect of transformational leadership

on team knowledge exchange via team knowledge goal generation. By taking the

novel lens of team goal pursuit, this study contributes to the literature on leadership

and teams by shedding light on how transformational leadership triggers the goal pur-

suit process of team knowledge exchange.

KEYWORDS

team knowledgeexchange, team knowledge goal generation, team knowledge goal striving,team‐

member exchange, transformational leadership

1|INTRODUCTION

Team knowledge exchange refers to the process whereby team

members retrieve their individual knowledge and share it with each

other via open discussion and documentation (Jiang & Chen, 2018;

Srivastava, Bartol, & Locke, 2006). Making individual knowledge

available to others within the team can be beneficial (Argote &

Fahrenkopf, 2016). In particular, as teams are typically formed to

benefit from the diverse knowledge reservoirs of different individ-

uals through knowledge dissemination and integration, team knowl-

edge exchange constitutes an important team process goal (i.e.,

a team goal that focuses on enhancing the process/means through

which teams achieve desired outcomes, such as high performance;

Zimmerman & Kitsantas, 1997, 1999) that enables teams to achieve

high performance (Dreu, Nijstad, & Van Knippenberg, 2008; Hinsz,

Tindale, & Vollrath, 1997; Nijstad & Dreu, 2012). In this regard,

knowledge exchange is critical because it allows team members to

develop a shared understanding regarding team tasks and responsi-

bilities, transfer complex knowledge from one to another, and build

up a team‐level knowledge architecture regarding who knows what

(Argote & Ingram, 2000; Wegner, 1986, 1995; Wegner, Erber, &

Raymond, 1991). Relatedly, prior research has shown that knowl-

edge exchange among team members can promote individual crea-

tivity (Dong, Bartol, Zhang, & Li, 2017), facilitate team

innovativeness (Černe, Nerstad, Dysvik, & Škerlavaj, 2014), and

increase team task performance (Hajro, Gibson, & Pudelko, 2017).

Despite its importance for team outcomes, team knowledge

exchange does not unfold automatically; rather, it is a process that

Received: 11 August 2017 Revised: 13 July 2019 Accepted: 21 July 2019

DOI: 10.1002/job.2411

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job

J Organ Behav. 2020;

4

1:17–31.

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