In this chapter, main definitions and originals of each dimension in the research are presented.
Transformational Leadership
Leadership is mainly seen as a material to effect employees, how a supervisor manages one’s subordinates, and trains people to improve their abilities or skills. Successful leadership carries out a satisfying result, which is important when it comes to project management, that is, being as a manager, selecting an appropriate leadership style may accelerate the process and efficiency of a project or goal, also solve problems appropriately as well (Gharehbaghi &
McManus, 2003; Limsila & Ogunlana, 2007). Considering all of the various categories of leadership proposed by researchers nowadays, the most well-known two sorts of leadership could be regarded as transactional and transformational leadership. To be effective, the two different ways of leading employees are required to be decided by the circumstances, technology, and workforce (Bass, 1991). Transactional and transformational leadership leads to a variety of consequences according to its situation at the moment, sometimes transactional leadership satisfies followers in a direct way and constructs a highly identification of an organization (Epitropaki & Martin, 2005; Riaz & Hussain Haider, 2010; Wu, 2009), while transformational leadership encourages the development of followers themselves, making people more competent when encountering their tasks.
The term of transformational leadership was first mentioned by Burns in 1978, that Bass and Avolio (1995) explained and developed the theory, which made the definition more completed. According to Bass (1991), leaders increase awareness and broaden the acceptance of subordinates’ attitude when facing their mission, also direct followers to perceive their self-interest and competencies to make progress of the group and themselves, it could be
regarded as transformational leadership. Transformational leadership guides followers to the direction of what a leader or an organization anticipates, and inspires them to achieve higher goal than expected. (Bass, 1999; Pieterse, Van Knippenberg, Schippers, & Stam, 2010; Yukl, 1999).
In this study, transformational leadership is set in the structural model as a main dimension. The table below according to Bass and Steidlmeier (1999) explains the factors and concerns of transformational leadership. Besides, in the questionnaire of this study,
“Idealized Influence” will be separated into two parts: “Idealized Influence Attitude” and
“Idealized Influence Behavior” in order to separate the words and action in this factor.
Table 2.1.
Leading Moral Components of Transactional and Transformational Leadership Leadership Dynamic Ethical Concern
Individualized Consideration To confirm that whether followers are treated as ends or means, considering whether their unique dignity and interests are respected or not.
Intellectual Stimulation To confirm that whether the leader’s program is accessible to dynamic transcendence and spirituality or is blocked as propaganda and rules to follow.
Inspirational Motivation To confirm that whether the leader provides for true empowerment and self-actualization of followers or not.
Idealized Influence To confirm that whether flattering and egoism on part of the leader dominates the situation and whether s/he is manipulative or not.
Trust
Concern for trust as a topic to discuss is increasing recently, which combines concepts from different areas and leads to new integrated consequences in each research fields.
Although definition of trust has been developed and discussed as a variety of shapes, according to Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman’s (1995) concept, they presented their definition of trust 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, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party” (Mayer et al., 1995, p. 712).
Table 2.2. partner who has high confidence in mind.
Hosmer 1995 A willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the party will do the particular behavior without the monitor or the control.
Mayer, Davis, &
Schoorman
1995 Regarded as positive expectations to another person’s behavior.
Ellis &
Shockley-Zalabak
2001 Positive expectations that others’ actions will be based on experiences, roles, interdependencies and relationships.
Currall & Inkpen 2002 The decision which is willing to depend on a partner with the anticipation that the partner will take action as the common agreement both sides agreed.
Trust requires positive attitude for another team, which is regarded as a vital context to show confidence in one another, and is positively related to communication among team members (Palvia, 2009; Pinjani & Palvia, 2013). There is an important and specific point of trust to notice: it is not only the relationship when people are willing to solve problems and receive or give help, but an action that takes risks; in other words, it requires trustors (people who trust others) to devote the element of trust in the relationship with trustees (people who are trusted) to taking actions, receiving advices or suggestions, following the directions, and so on. Being willing to show their vulnerability and take risks of getting wrong information by mistake or being betrayed is one of the characteristics of trust as well. (Bachmann, 2001;
Bachmann & Inkpen, 2011; Johnson-George & Swap, 1982; Mayer et al., 1995).
Trust is a common integrated concept that impacts on the personal psychological history and institutional structure for entire groups, which acts as a major driving force for collaborative team behavior (Mayer et al., 1995; Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, & Camerer, 1998).
To confirm the factors of trustworthiness that effects how employees cooperate with each other in an organization, competence, integrity and benevolence emphasized by researchers that observe the relationship of trustees and trustors became indispensible in this research, which are vital to knowledge sharing as well (Alavi & Tiwana, 2002; Hall, 2001; Ipe, 2003;
Mayer et al., 1995).
According to Shockley-Zalabak, Ellis, & Cesaria’s theory (2003), five dimensions of trust will be used in this study to validate the existence of relationship between trust and knowledge sharing as well as trust and innovation: (1) concern for employees, to check if supervisors care about their employees and understand employee welfare; (2) openness and honesty, which allows employees to evaluate their own competency and whether they have courage to express opinion in front of supervisors; (3) identification, the consistency of connections and similar value with colleagues and supervisors; (4) reliability, to observe if supervisors keep their commitments and standards of work to employees; (5) competence, the
ability of colleagues and the efficiency of firm reaching goals, also the quality of organization’s products and services.
Figure 2.1. Model of Trust. Adapted from “Measuring organizational trust: Cross-cultural survey and index,” by Shockley-Zalabak, Ellis, & Cesaria, 2003. Copyright 2003 by IABC Research Foundation.
Organizational Culture
Organizational culture has been perceived in 1980s as one of the core values of managerial components, which influences innovativeness and flexibility, even financial performance in an organization, and firms with strong cultures lead to impressive performance (Deal & Kennedy, 1982; Peters & Waterman, 1982; Tichy, 1983). It varies with different definitions, and is one of the main reasons to determinate the result when a firm is changing its managerial structure and action (Linnenluecke & Griffiths, 2010). An organization should face its culture squarely, since culture not only correlated with its stakeholders (including employees, customers, suppliers, and competitors), but involves in
Concern for Employees
Openness and Honesty
Identification
Reliability
Competence
Trust
values, beliefs, representations, symbols that defines how it engage business and the interaction among stakeholders. (Barney, 1986; Hofstede, 1997). Organizational culture is considered as an essential aspect in managerial transformation on the whole (Jung et al., 2009), including when determining the characteristics of the relationships of stakeholders and firms with high performance (Latham, 2008).
Cameron and Quinn (2006) proposed a model of organization culture as Figure 2.2 presents, which indicates that there are four sorts of core values, which their criteria specify an organization with different characteristics.
Figure 2.2. The Competing Values Framework. Adopted from Diagnosing and changing organizational culture: Based on the competing values framework (p.46), by K.S. Cameron and R. E .Quinn, 2006, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Copyright 2006 by Wiley.
In this study, the four core values are adopted to be indicators in the questionnaire and measure which culture the respondents are working in. Clan culture emphasizes doing works together and mentoring people, also the family-like, intimate interaction in the working circumstances; adhocracy culture focuses on being positive and aggressive, taking risk, doing works rapidly, and innovation; hierarchy culture owns its law in the organization, doing works right, keeping the process steadily and under control is the leader’s strategy and goal;
market culture pays attention to results, achievements and consequences, thus makes the value of competition important in this sort of culture.
Knowledge Sharing
Of all the process of knowledge management, knowledge sharing is regarded as the most difficult and challenging (Quinn et al., 1998) that takes lots of time and endeavors (Gibbert &
Krause, 2002), which is especially crucial when providing information to clients or contribute to the results and advice of a project (Cummings, 2004). Past research has indicated that knowledge sharing has great effect on organizational performance (Argote & Ingram, 2000;
Cummings, 2004; Gardner, Gino & Staats, 2012; Hansen, 2002). In addition, how people apply shared knowledge might affect the outcomes of knowledge capital that influences the efficiency of work, being claimed that sharing and applying knowledge should be regarded as entirely different concepts (Alavi & Tiwana, 2002; Dennis, 1996; Grant, 1996; Majchrzak et al., 2004).
Based on the behavioral aspect of Lin (2007) and the MOA (Motivation-Opportunity-Ability) framework recommended by Blumberg and Pringle (1982), it has been a well-established model to test work performance and also knowledge sharing behavior now, thus the study will use the dimensions of MOA model to measure knowledge sharing in the goal organization. Motivation (Willingness) acquires the individual’s
promotions, recognition, appreciation, trust among people, and so on). Opportunity corresponds to the environmental or background systems and devices that influence actions, by confirming that are the structure, training programs and events effective to encourage knowledge sharing behavior. Ability determines that whether the skills or knowledge can be transferred and expressed successfully or not, which also affects consequence of knowledge sharing.
Figure 2.3. The MOA Model. Adapted from “The missing opportunity in organizational research: some implications for a theory of work performance” by Blumberg & Pringle, 1982, Academy of Management Review, 7(4), 565. Copyright 1982 by the Academy of Management.
Innovation
Discussions about innovation are increasing nowadays, especially for scientific fields and enterprises when creating objects new and thus attracts people’s interest. Innovation is regarded as the adoption of a new idea or behavior (Jiménez-Jiménez & Sanz-Valle, 2011;
Zaltman & Duncan, 1973), which influences procedures and/or strategies leading to commercial success and possible market leadership, and renovates the definition and meaning of a product, service, and even value to an organization (Katz, 2007). Innovation is also defined as an application of new knowledge which provides a new product or service that
Knowledge Sharing Willingness
(Motivation)
Capacity (Ability)
Opportunity
customers are willing to obtain (Porter, 2011). The following table has listed several definitions of innovation by researchers in the past decades.
Table 2.3.
Definition of Innovation
Author Year Definition
Thompson 1965 The generation, acceptance, and
implementation of new ideas, processes, products, or services, which is also the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization.
Urabe et al. 1988 Consisting of the generation of a new idea and its implementation into a new product, process or service. Moreover, it leads to the dynamic growth of the national economy and amplifies employment as well as to an establishment of profit for the innovative business enterprise.
Amabile et al. 1996 The successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization.
Sher & Yang 2005 Innovation is changing the product or process radically or incrementally, and the value as well.
Katz 2007 Innovation is the successful generation, development and achievements of new and original ideas, which introduces new products, processes and/or strategies to a company or enhance current products.
Essmann 2009 Innovation capability is the organizational means with which innovative outputs are generated.
Jiménez-Jiménez &
Sanz-Valle
2011 The adoption of a new idea and behavior.
According to past researchers, innovation can not only create new concepts and objects, but lead to pure profit and high financial performance (Barney, 1991; Calantone et al., 2002;
Deshpandé & Farley, 2004; Zahra, Ireland, & Hitt, 2000). Furthermore, when facing obstacles and the fast-changing market nowadays, innovation helps managers to solve problems (Hult, Hurley, and Knight, 2004) and enhances the competitiveness of an organization and makes it more powerful to economic growth (Hult & Ketchen, 2001;
Tushman, Anderson, & O’Reilly, 1997).
A variety of tools and factors were used to examine innovation in the past, while most of them adopted process innovation, organizational innovation and technological innovation into their studies. Progress innovation refers to putting new ideas and materials into procedure or service in an organization, which produces entirely new products and services that may also solve potential or present problems and conquer challenges (Damanpour & Gopalakrishnan, 2001). Organizational innovation, being different as the former, creates and constructs its original device, system, process, service, policy or program in order to adapt to the competitive circumstances outside the organization (Damanpour, 1991); technological innovation creates new products or services to customers by technology or market knowledge (Afuah, 2003).
Organizational Performance
Most of the investors and stakeholders are concerned with the performance of an organization. To consider the definition of organization performance for especially business purpose, it presents the outcome of the previous achievement by the organization’s own interior standard (Emden, Yaprak, & Cavusgil, 2005).
Elements from Balanced Scorecard (BSC) are applied as the factors to measure organizational performance, that the factors are adapted as indicators of innovativeness, financial performance, and customer satisfaction.
Innovativeness
Due to the rapidly changing circumstances, especially for industries related to technology nowadays, to face challenges of increasing obstacles and this highly-competitive market, the organizational performance of a firm’s innovativeness becomes essential and indispensable. In addition, the items of this indicator correlate with knowledge sharing, which are able to show the relationship between knowledge sharing and organizational performance, thus prove whether the two dimensions are connected or not.
Financial performance
In terms of reducing operational costs, sales growth rate, and profit rate, financial performance is measured in an organization that is in consider of its profit. In this study, the situation of financial flexibility, internal costs, and resources acquisition from respondents will be observed.
Customer Satisfaction
People who accept the services and products from an organization are considered as customers in this study, which their satisfaction including service quality and the speed to response their need will be answered by employees’ perspectives.