Yongjun Liang, Zhongwu Li, Wing-Keung Wong
With the recovery of the economy, employee turnover intention will increase correspondingly, and employee turnover will impact the loss of tacit knowledge which could be critical for organizations. Thus, it is important to study how to maintain tacit knowledge in the organization. To contribute literature in this area, this paper studies the impact of employee turnover intention on tacit knowledge, which, in turn, helps scholars to gain knowledge sharing based on social exchange theory from different perspectives. To do so, we use transformational leadership factor in leadership theory and transactive memory system factor based on social exchange theory to expand the research of tacit knowledge sharing. We find that turnover intention and transactive memory systems play mediating roles between transformational leadership and tacit knowledge sharing. Our study expands the work by existing literature on tacit knowledge sharing with certain theoretical significance and enriches the theoretical research literature in the field of tacit knowledge research. Our findings have practical significant contributions for organizations to obtain valuable knowledge management which, in turn, enhance the continuation of tacit knowledge.