Linking servant leadership to employees’ knowledge sharing: the role of thriving at work and organizational identification

Drawing upon stewardship theory, we propose a moderated mediation model that thriving at work as the mediator and organizational identification as the moderator in the relationships between servant leadership and employee knowledge sharing. Using a sample of 355 working adults through a time-lagged survey in China, the hypotheses were demonstrated using Hayes’ PROCESS macro in SPSS. The results reveal that thriving at work fully mediates the positive effect of servant leadership on employee knowledge sharing. Furthermore, the indirect effect of servant leadership on knowledge sharing via thriving at work is stronger for employees with high organizational identification. This study advances our understanding of how servant leadership results in knowledge management among employees. This contributes to the literature by identifying thriving at work as a suitable mediating mechanism linking the positive associations of servant leadership with employees’ knowledge sharing behavior.