[Speech] Knowledge sharing, Shared leadership and Innovative behavior
Written by Vipin Saini
On 31st of March 2022 (Thur), Rama Krishna, a recent Ph.D. pass out from the HR discipline, was invited by Professor Yu-Chen Yang to give a speech on the topic of "Knowledge sharing, shared leadership and innovative behavior" at the College of Management, NSYSU. The main attendances of this speech are students from IBMBA and GHRM MBA programs who take the course of Global Supply Chain Management. Rama utilized his research experience of publishing in peer-reviewed journals to make sessions interactive and focused on effective communication, participation, and involvement of students so that the agenda of the whole lecture is reached out to the students effectively.
During the speech, Rama presented his published article and shared the effect of knowledge sharing among team members on the development of shared leadership and innovative behavior. Rama explained the concepts of knowledge sharing, and shared leadership at team level and its effect on innovative behavior at individual level by utilizing the hotel data from Taiwan. In the knowledge-based economy, resources and competencies among organizations are critical factors for industries to remain competitive and when it comes to customer-facing industries like hotels then the role of teamwork and knowledge sharing are even more important.
Rama gave an extremely insightful talk on the importance of knowledge sharing. The results of knowledge sharing further improve the quality of working environment and scale up the knowledge at team-level. One of the best aspects about building shared knowledge base is that employees can learn from each other’s mistakes and make sure they don’t repeat it. But employees can also tap into the best experiences, It’s pretty much as simple as that. When people share what hasn’t worked in a particular environment and their teammates can find it insightful, it prevents somebody else from making the same mistake – that’s the importance of sharing information with colleagues.
Next, comes the geographically distant teammates, and don’t forget about them. It’s often challenging for them to learn from their colleagues outside of the face-to-face environment, and perhaps more difficult to ask the right questions. When teammates are in remote location, they may be worried about pestering people. Well, when people can search for shared knowledge, that reduces misunderstanding among team members.
When it comes to clarifying the queries, students raised multiple questions “Why the study selected hotel industry for the survey?” Rama replied that the government of Taiwan has always listed the tourism industry as one of the key industries and possibly led to the growth in the number of international tourist hotels. Further, Taiwan being a small island it plays a significant role into the growing Asian market.
Another question was about “What is the most efficient way organizations are working on shared leadership and knowledge sharing” Rama replied that Sharing leadership responsibilities helps employees become more inclusive and self-reflective because more people are exchanging important information, discussing issues, and making decisions collaboratively. Second, knowledge sharing in the workplace is critical where all employees have access to information. They don’t have to wait until an employee with specific knowledge returns from holiday or spend an hour looking for the answer to their question. They can find it when they need it, digest it, apply it to their work, and perform better and more effectively.
Moreover, in addition to sharing the conceptual knowledge, Rama also provided some tips about cross-level study by designing survey, collecting data at team level, and analyzing at individual level using available methods and tools. In the interactive session, students thoroughly enjoyed and gained ample awareness about knowledge sharing, shared leadership and innovative behavior.
