Investigating the effects of psychological empowerment and interpersonal conflicts on employees’ knowledge sharing intentions

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how different forms of interpersonal conflicts and employees’ psychological empowerment may affect knowledge sharing intentions directly or indirectly via interpersonal trust in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach: Survey data collected from 249 employees of 37 of the top 500 corporations in the manufacturing industry in Taiwan were used for the data analysis. The research model was analyzed using the component-based structural equation modeling technique, namely, the partial least squares (PLS) approach. Findings: The results indicate that both relationship and task conflicts have significant indirect effects on employees’ knowledge sharing intentions via psychological empowerment and trust. Additionally, psychological empowerment significantly influences employees’ knowledge sharing intentions both directly and indirectly via trust. Research limitations/implications: The primary theoretical implication is an advancement in the understanding of the critical antecedents of and their different effects on employees’ knowledge sharing intentions from the perspectives of conflict management and individual psychological empowerment. Future research may concentrate on investigating the bidirectional interactions among trust, relationship conflicts and task conflicts in different knowledge-sharing contexts. Practical implications: This study provides practical insights into conflict resolution intended to facilitate psychological empowerment and interpersonal trust that encourage knowledge sharing in the workplace. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first knowledge sharing study that empirically examines how task and relationship conflicts affect employees’ knowledge sharing intentions differently via the mediation of their perceived psychological empowerment and interpersonal trust in one another in the workplace.