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.