Enhancing Knowledge Sharing through Top Management Support: Bridging the Gap between Explicit and Implicit Knowledge in Innovative Organizations

This paper investigates the complex relationship between top management support (TMS) and knowledge sharing within organizations, focusing on the important distinction between explicit and implicit knowledge. It illustrates the importance of TMS in fostering a culture conducive to knowledge sharing by promoting an environment of trust and openness to ideas among employees. Despite the recognized importance of TMS, existing literature reveals substantial gaps in differentiating its effects on explicit versus implicit knowledge sharing. To analyze the relationships between variables, data was collected from innovative SMEs via an online survey instrument in mid-June 2025 and mid-July 2025. Only 315 surveys were returned and analyzed by using structural equation modeling. All hypotheses are accepted, which suggests that both openness and trust, as TMS factors, have a strong correlation with knowledge sharing, albeit in different degrees. For example, openness to employee ideas is most effective for providing implicit knowledge, while developing trust is most effective for receiving implicit knowledge. Future research directions are proposed to address the existing gaps, emphasizing the need for a more nuanced view of how TMS interacts with different forms of knowledge within the organizational context.