TY - JOUR

T1 - The influence of empowering leadership on repatriate knowledge transfer

T2 - Understanding mechanisms and boundary conditions

AU - Bucher, Jana

AU - Burmeister, Anne

AU - Osland, Joyce

AU - Deller, Jürgen

N1 - Funding Information: This work was partially supported by the State of Lower Saxony, Germany through doctoral scholarship funds that are aimed at promoting scientific female talent. Publisher Copyright: © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

PY - 2022/3/17

Y1 - 2022/3/17

N2 - Repatriate knowledge represents a valuable organizational resource, but its transfer upon return to the domestic work unit is a difficult process that often fails. To date, the leaders’ role in repatriate knowledge transfer (RKT) has not been studied empirically. This study employs the social information processing theory to understand the effect of empowering leadership on RKT. Based on multi-source data from 101 repatriate and domestic coworker dyads, we found that empowering leadership facilitated RKT via the perceived trustworthiness of domestic coworkers. Furthermore, the positive influence of empowering leaders on RKT was stronger when repatriate agreeableness was high. With our findings, we advance research on the role of leaders in cross-border knowledge transfer processes via repatriates in multinational companies.

AB - Repatriate knowledge represents a valuable organizational resource, but its transfer upon return to the domestic work unit is a difficult process that often fails. To date, the leaders’ role in repatriate knowledge transfer (RKT) has not been studied empirically. This study employs the social information processing theory to understand the effect of empowering leadership on RKT. Based on multi-source data from 101 repatriate and domestic coworker dyads, we found that empowering leadership facilitated RKT via the perceived trustworthiness of domestic coworkers. Furthermore, the positive influence of empowering leaders on RKT was stronger when repatriate agreeableness was high. With our findings, we advance research on the role of leaders in cross-border knowledge transfer processes via repatriates in multinational companies.

KW - Management studies

KW - international human ressource management

KW - Repatriation

KW - Repatriate Knowledge Transfer

KW - Business psychology

KW - international human ressource management

KW - Repatriation

KW - Repatriate Knowledge Transfer

KW - empowerring leadership

KW - international assignment

KW - repatriate agreeableness

KW - repatriate knowledge transfer

KW - social information processing theory

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85086030808&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/09585192.2020.1771400

DO - 10.1080/09585192.2020.1771400

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 33

SP - 1437

EP - 1462

JO - The International Journal of Human Resource Management

JF - The International Journal of Human Resource Management

SN - 0958-5192

IS - 7

ER -