How to unleash innovative work behavior of SMEs workers through clan culture? “Testing the mediating role of knowledge sharing”

The purpose of this paper is to examine perceived supervisory support (PSS) and the impact of the antecedents of sharing knowledge, namely, clan culture (CC) as well as trust in innovative work behavior (IWB).

This research focuses on small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) employees, especially SMEs located around tourist attractions in Indonesia. Data collection was carried out by distributing questionnaires. The distribution of the questionnaire was carried out in two ways, namely, the offline and online systems via the Google form. Data analysis tool using structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that PSS, knowledge sharing (KS), CC as well as trust are positively related to IWB. In addition, it was also found that KS was proven to mediate CC relationships as well as the trust which had a positive relationship with IWB.

The research design uses cross-sectional data. This means that the measurement of variables is based on self-reports and is carried out at one time, which can lead to method bias that can affect the results of the study. Thus, further research is recommended to collect data longitudinally, which will make the findings stronger.

Theoretically, this study extends previous research by outlining a set of organizational elements that tend to influence KS behavior and their impact on IWB in the SMEs context.

Managers and owners of SMEs need to create a CC because the creation of a family or CC will more easily foster a culture of sharing knowledge within the organization, which will ultimately increase IWB.

This study emphasizes that it is not only internal factors within employees that can foster IWB but there are external factors that play an important role in increasing IWB, such as CC, PSS, trust and KS. And to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to include all the constructs in one model and the context of SMEs.