Investigating the impact of staff empowerment on knowledge sharing; a survey of the mediating role of organizational citizenship behavior

Nowadays, thanks to globalization, technological innovations, knowledge-oriented organizations and development of intense comparative environment, there have been accelerating changes in business settings; thus, enterprises need to have a modern rethinking on knowledge management systems. One of the necessary actions is to consider the consequences of sharing knowledge and factors influencing successful knowledge sharing in the organization. This article investigates the effect of employee empowerment and organizational citizenship behavior on knowledge sharing in Research Institute of Petroleum Industry. To reach this goal, the researchers have conducted a multi-level study to link different concepts including empowerment, organizational citizenship behavior and knowledge sharing within a causal model. The method employed in this study is descriptive and correlational. Questionnaire has been used for data collection and data analysis has been conducted using LISREL software. The results suggested that empowerment has positively, directly and significantly affected the citizenship behavior. There has also been a positive relationship between empowerment and knowledge sharing. Finally, organizational citizenship behavior has had a mediating role in terms of empowerment and knowledge sharing.