Investigating the moderating effects of organizational culture and leadership style on IT-adoption and knowledge-sharing intention

Abstract

Purpose

In light of the important roles of organizational culture and leadership style in IT-adoption intention and knowledge-sharing intention, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships among IT involvement, IT-adoption intention, and knowledge-sharing intention, as well as the moderating effects of organizational culture and leadership style on IT-adoption intention and knowledge-sharing intention.

Design/methodology/approach

This study begins with a literature review followed by the use of a questionnaire method and statistical analytical techniques (hierarchical regression analysis) to investigate the relationships among IT involvement, IT-adoption intention, knowledge-sharing intention, organizational culture, and leadership style.

Findings

The result showed that IT involvement has a significant and positive influence on IT-adoption intention, which further affects the knowledge-sharing intention. Moreover, organizational culture and leadership style have moderating effects on the IT adoption and knowledge-sharing intention.

Research limitations/implications

This research applied a purposive sampling method and obtained a slightly inadequate number of respondents. Therefore, it is suggested that future research should apply random sampling method to collect more responses and increase the generalizability of the findings.

Practical implications

This research suggests that organizations which adopt servant leadership or charismatic leadership, as well as organizations with clan or hierarchy cultures should work on enhancing staff’s knowledge-sharing intention by first raising their IT-adoption intention.

Originality/value

If an enterprise would like to encourage its staff to be more proactive at adopting IT and more willing to share knowledge, then it should first examine its current leadership style and organizational culture in order to propose concrete and effective methods to achieve this, and at the same time, this can help stimulate organizational learning and generate new ideas and knowledge.

Citation

Tseng, S.-M. (2017), "Investigating the moderating effects of organizational culture and leadership style on IT-adoption and knowledge-sharing intention", Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 583-604. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEIM-04-2016-0081