Authentic Leadership and Knowledge Management in Public Libraries: Role of Organizational Commitment Using Mixed Method Research

Versatile leadership theories have been practiced to organizational sustainability last decade. Interestingly, authentic leadership has been proved to have effective practical implications to ensure organizational sustainability. Drawing from authentic leadership theory, this research aims at exploring the direct and indirect effect of authentic leadership on knowledge-management: explicit and tacit knowledge sharing behavior about public libraries in higher educational institutions (HEIs). This research employed an affective commitment mechanism to mediate the relationship between authentic leadership and knowledge-management. By using a sequential explanatory research design, this research collected data from the professors of public HEIs. The research administered 368 designed survey Questionnaires among the professors of public HEIs in Lahore, Pakistan. The research findings supported that authentic leadership has a direct significant effect on knowledge-management: explicit and tacit knowledge sharing behavior. Nevertheless, the research explored that authentic leadership has an indirect effect on tacit knowledge sharing behavior but didn’t influence explicit knowledge sharing behavior indirectly by the mediating role of affective commitment. To cope with these empirical findings, the research conducted 15 in-depth interviews to explore what type of factors creates hurdles in sharing explicit knowledge in the presence of emotional attachment: affective organizational commitment. This study suggests managers motivate professors to be committed within HEIs. In this way, the professors will be able to share tacit knowledge (hidden ideas and concepts, library images, library portfolios, and library-novelty) among the peers. The present study also concludes with limitations and future research.