HRM 5700 Module 5 Written Assignment: Leadership, Trust and Knowledge Sharing Example

Why Scientists Share With Some Colleagues and Not Others: Trust and Leadership at Meridian BioLabs

Student Name

Master of Science in Human Resources Management, Thomas Edison State University

HRM-5700: The Effectiveness of a Market-Connected Culture

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Why Scientists Share With Some Colleagues and Not Others: Trust and Leadership at Meridian BioLabs

Introduction

Earlier modules found that Meridian's knowledge stays within teams and that its lessons are rarely reused. A survey of 410 scientists this spring helped explain why. Eighty-two percent said they would ask a teammate for help with a difficult method, but only 31 percent would ask a scientist in another department, and 44 percent said sharing problems outside their team could hurt their reputation. These results point to trust as the missing condition. This assignment examines how trust and leadership affect knowledge sharing and what Meridian can do.

What Trust Is

Mayer et al. (1995) defined trust as the willingness to be vulnerable to another party based on the expectation that the other will act in ways important to the trustor. They identified three characteristics that make someone trustworthy: ability, the skills and competence relevant to a domain; benevolence, the belief that the other wants to do good for the trustor; and integrity, the belief that the other follows principles the trustor finds acceptable. Sharing knowledge, especially about a failure, makes a person vulnerable, so it depends on all three.

Trust and Knowledge Transfer

Levin and Cross (2004) studied knowledge transfer in three companies and found that trust mediated the relationship between the strength of ties and the usefulness of knowledge received. Strong ties, such as those within teams, produced useful knowledge largely because people trusted each other. Weak ties, connections to people one knows less well, provided more novel knowledge, but only when the seeker trusted the source's competence. They also found that competence-based trust mattered most for transferring tacit knowledge, the kind Meridian's scientists hold.

This explains the survey pattern. Scientists trust teammates on all three dimensions. They have little basis for judging the ability of scientists in other departments and fear that admitting a problem to them will be used against them, a doubt about benevolence. Meridian's most valuable knowledge flows would cross departments, through weak ties that are currently not trusted.

Leadership's Role

Leaders shape trust through what they do. Srivastava et al. (2006) found that empowering leadership, which includes leading by example, participative decision making, coaching, informing and showing concern, was positively related to knowledge sharing in management teams, which in turn improved team efficacy and performance. At Meridian, department heads compete for resources and rarely praise other departments' work, which signals to scientists that helping another department is not valued. Leaders who share their own mistakes, ask other departments for help in public and recognize cross-team assistance would model the behavior they want.

How HR Can Build Trust

Human resources can create the conditions for trust across teams. Cross-departmental projects and rotations give scientists direct experience of each other's ability. An expert directory with profiles of methods and past studies provides a basis for competence-based trust before people meet. Performance reviews that include help given to other teams reward benevolence. Clear, consistently applied rules about how information shared about failures will be used, such as never in individual performance ratings, protect integrity. Leadership development for department heads can teach empowering behaviors and measure them through upward feedback.

Measuring Progress

Meridian should repeat the survey annually, tracking the share of scientists willing to seek help across departments and the share who believe sharing problems is safe. It should also track the use of the expert directory and the number of cross-department contributions to the lessons database proposed in Module 3. A target of 55 percent willing to seek help across departments within two years would indicate meaningful progress.

Conclusion

Meridian's scientists share knowledge where they trust each other and hold it back where they do not. Research shows that trust, especially competence-based trust, unlocks the knowledge in weaker ties, and that empowering leadership encourages sharing. Leader behavior and HR practices that build trust across departments are the foundation for the knowledge management changes proposed in this course.

References

Levin, D. Z., & Cross, R. (2004). The strength of weak ties you can trust: The mediating role of trust in effective knowledge transfer. Management Science, 50(11), 1477-1490. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1030.0136

Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of Management Review, 20(3), 709-734. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1995.9508080335

Srivastava, A., Bartol, K. M., & Locke, E. A. (2006). Empowering leadership in management teams: Effects on knowledge sharing, efficacy, and performance. Academy of Management Journal, 49(6), 1239-1251. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2006.23478718