Entrepreneurial and servant leadership in knowledge sharing: unveiling the roles of psychological safety and workplace bullying

Purpose Knowledge-sharing behavior (KSB) is vital for innovation and collaboration in knowledge-intensive sectors. An employee’s willingness to share is heavily dependent on leadership’s influence and support. The purpose of this study is to examine the distinct effects of entrepreneurial leadership (EL) and servant leadership (SL) on employees’ KSB. It also investigates whether SL explains additional variance in KSB beyond EL. Furthermore, the study explores the mediating role of psychological safety (PS) and assesses the moderating effect of workplace bullying (WB) on the relationship between PS and KSB. Design/methodology/approach Data was collected in a multiwave cross-sectional design using digital and physical distribution methods. The final data set includes 541 personnel from various information technology firms in Bangladesh. Structural equation modeling was used to thoroughly test the hypotheses and compare model performance. Findings The results imply that SL not only has a greater positive influence on KSB but also represents an additive variation in KSB above and beyond EL. Likewise, the research demonstrated that the influence of EL on KSB is more effectively mediated by PS. Moreover, WB was found to weaken the positive PS on KSB. Originality/value This study provides novel empirical insights into the unique and supplementary impact of SL on KSB, surpassing the influence of EL. It significantly extends the literature on EL, SL and knowledge-sharing by demonstrating their distinct contributions to knowledge distribution via intricate mediation and moderation processes.