Within digital collaborative teams, how can leaders promote productive knowledge sharing among members with diverse settings?

Abstract

Although value networks and virtual cross-functional teams, which serve as examples of digital collaborative organizations in the digital economy, have grown in popularity, few studies have looked at knowledge sharing in these teams. Yet lack of knowledge sharing can hurt teamwork and value creation.So, this study integrates transactional theory of stress and coping and self-determination theory into the stimulus-organism-response model to better understand the mechanisms. We conducted an empirical analysis after surveying of 386 participants from 49 digital collaboration teams in 27 service and industrial firms.The results indicate that the basic psychological needs and both coping strategies together mediate the correlation between diversity-oriented leadership and organizational knowledge sharing. Surprisingly, competence and autonomy needs satisfaction are necessary for organizational knowledge sharing, while perceived relatedness needs satisfaction is the icebreaker for organizational knowledge sharing.