Emotional intelligence, transformational leadership, and knowledge sharing behaviour among Academic Staff In Kenyan Universities

Abstract

Knowledge sharing behavior has become increasingly important in recent years, and is recognized as a critical asset for universities particularly due to the growing complexity of dynamic leadership environments and the further advancement of regulatory frameworks for competitive advantage. Many studies on emotional intelligence and knowledge sharing behavior among academic staff have only focused on developed countries and less on developing nations. The aim of the study is to fill this gap by evaluating the moderating effect of transformational leadership on the relationship between emotional intelligence and knowledge sharing behavior in Kenyan universities. The specific objectives were to determine the effect of emotional self-awareness, self-regulation social skills, interpersonal relations and humility on knowledge sharing behavior in Kenyan universities and transformational leadership as a moderator in the relationship. The study was driven by social exchange theory, SECI Model and transformational leadership theory.Explanatory research design were adopted with a positivism approach. The target population comprised of 6423 and a sample of 376 academic staff drawn from fourteen chattered universities in Nairobi County Kenya main campuses only. The study used stratified technique to select the university‘s academic staff into 14 strata‘s representing each university in Nairobi County, Kenya the staff was selected using simple random sampling. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used for analysis while hypotheses were tested using hierarchical regression. The regression results indicated that self-awareness (β = 0.37, p<0.05), Self-regulation (β = 0.11, p<0.05), Social skills (β = 0.10, p<0.05), Interpersonal skills (β = 0.18, p<0.05), and Humility (β = 0.30, p<0.05) has a positive and significant effect on knowledge sharing behaviour. The study further, established that transformational leadership positively moderates the relationships between self- awareness and knowledge sharing behavior (β = 1.195, ρ<0.05), self-regulation and knowledge sharing behavior (β = 0.483, ρ<0.05), social skills and knowledge sharing behavior (β = 0.631, ρ<0.05), interpersonal skills and knowledge sharing behavior (β= 0.624, ρ<0.05), and humility (β = 0.01, ρ>0.05) indicating that there is a positive and insignificant moderating effect of transformational leadership on the relationship between humility and knowledge sharing behavior. Similarly, the overall R and R 2 of the joint contribution of the predictor variables that explain knowledge sharing behavior are 81% and 66% respectively. The study concluded that high proportion of emotional intelligence results to improved employee knowledge sharing behavior crucial to transforming universities in Kenya and for knowledge sharing behavior to drive. In addition, this study recommends that it is imperative for the academic staff to have emotional intelligence in knowledge sharing behaviour so that they can identify areas of leadership in universities. Finally, Universities in Kenya are expected to train its employees on how to manage change from a transformative angle since it was evident that whenever academic staff had transformational leadership in the university, they would inspire and influence universities competitive advantage through knowledge and emotional intelligence.