Investigation of the Effect of Communication and Task Conflict on the Employees’ Knowledge Sharing: The Mediating Role of Trust and Psychological Empowerment

The present study aims at investigating the effect of communication and task conflict on the employees’ knowledge sharing with the mediating role of trust and psychological empowerment in the Hamadan Education Organization.

This is an applied study, and a data collection form was used to conduct a survey. The statistical population includes the authorities and employees of the Hamadan Education Organization. Since the population is infinite, 384 people were selected out of the employees, experts, and authorities of this organization by simple random sampling. The variables were measured by a standard questionnaire. The data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics. The hypotheses were tested by structural equation modeling (SEM).

According to the results, task conflict can explain the variance of the employee’s communication conflicts by 64.3% and the psychological empowerment of the employees by 29.8%. Communication conflicts can explain the differences in psychological empowerment of 71.1% of employees, trust of 6.9% of employees, and knowledge sharing of 19.9% of employees. Psychological empowerment can explain 28.8% of employee trust fluctuations and 23.4% of employee knowledge sharing. The employees’ trust can explain 37.5% of the variance of the employees’ knowledge sharing in Hamadan Education Organization.

In the first hypothesis, the effect of task conflict on communication conflict was approved by 0.643. The results of the present study are consistent with the findings reported by Wei-Tsong Wang et al. (2019). In the second hypothesis, the effect of task conflict on the psychological empowerment of the employees was approved by -0.298. The standardized coefficient of correlation between these two variables is negative. So, this further strongly suggests that an increase in task conflict leads to a decrease in psychological empowerment of the employees, and vice versa. The results of this research are consistent with the findings reported by Mohammad et al. (2013). In the third hypothesis, the effect of communication conflict on the psychological empowerment of the employees was approved by 0.071. The results are consistent with the findings reported by Wei-Tsong Wang et al. (2019). So also, another hypothesis has approved the effect of communication conflict on the employees’ trust by 0.288. The results are consistent with the findings reported by Wei-Tsong Wang et al. (2019).  In the fifth hypothesis, the effect of psychological empowerment on the employees’ trust was approved by 0.069. The results are consistent with the findings reported by Alajmi (2017).  In the sixth hypothesis, the effect of psychological empowerment on the employees’ knowledge sharing in the Education Department was approved by 0.158. This finding is consistent with the results of studies performed by Helmy et al. (2019) and Ghalavandi et al. (2017).   In the seventh hypothesis, the effect of trust on employees’ knowledge sharing in the Hamadan Education Department was approved by 0.375. This finding is consistent with the results of studies performed by Hasanzadeh and Alizadeh (2017) and Ebrahimi et al. (2012). This hypothesis suggests that there is a significant positive relationship between the components of organizational trust and all the dimensions of knowledge management. Furthermore, trust components including the employees’ trust in each other, trust with the manager, and institutional trust can also play a significantly positive predictive role in explaining knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, knowledge application, and knowledge preservation. In other words, it can be concluded from this hypothesis that higher trust leads to participation in knowledge sharing and management that can eventually be effective in capability and performance. In the eighth hypothesis, the effect of communication conflict on the employees’ knowledge sharing was approved by 0.199. This finding is consistent with the results reported by Wei-Tsong Wang et al. (2019). Finally, the ninth hypothesis approved the effect of task conflict on the employees’ knowledge sharing in the Hamadan Education Department by -0.23. As the standardized coefficient of correlation between these two variables is negative, an increase in task conflict leads to a decrease in the employees’ knowledge sharing, and vice versa. Therefore, the research hypotheses show that the lower the conflict between the employees, the higher their trust in the organization will be. Thus, they will be more motivated to participate in group and systemic activities such as knowledge sharing and information exchange between different sectors. As shown in current and previous surveys, the factors mentioned can promote and improve employee performance and thus organizational performance.