Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to answer the questions: What are top executives' experiences and approaches to leadership, and how do these statements relate to transformational leadership, communities of practice, and knowledge loss? It is done by investigating how transformational leaders' behavioural traits align with the aforementioned theories and how this combination can prevent knowledge loss. I, therefore, investigate how leaders, through their daily approaches, directly and indirectly, support strategies and platforms that help prevent knowledge loss.
Design and methodological approach
This study is grounded in three theories: one leadership theory and two knowledge management theories. Furthermore, the research is guided by a social constructivist approach combined with interpretivism, providing a humanistic understanding of knowledge as a process happening in social endeavours. Consequently, I am investigating practitioners' experiences and approaches to leadership. The data is interviews or Tedx Talks with eight different CEOs from large America-based enterprises, which are scrutinised by applying a thematic analysis.
Findings
This study has shown that transformational leadership can minimise knowledge loss by creating an organisational culture based on openness and trust. This encourages employees to discuss and debate their knowledge and ideas, thus revealing tacit knowledge that can be transformed into explicit knowledge through repeated interaction. When tacit knowledge becomes explicit it is possible to distribute the knowledge among the employees, making a company less dependent on what knowledge each employee possesses. Furthermore, a leader can migrate knowledge loss by establishing a healthy culture where employees like to be thus decreasing turnover and consequently knowledge loss.
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Practical implications
The study is helpful for leaders and organisations that wish to understand how their approaches and strategies affect the amount of knowledge they lose when they experience the loss of employees. Furthermore, this awareness can support leaders in implementing strategies that are helpful in preventing knowledge loss. Lastly, it also provides leaders with an understanding of how challenges leaders experience can affect knowledge loss positively and negatively.
Originality and value
The field of knowledge management and leadership is mainly investigated through empirical research. Furthermore, to my knowledge, no studies or a limited amount of studies have instigated transformational leadership in combination with COPs and organisational knowledge creation theory and its relation to knowledge loss. This paper tries to cover that gap and provide new insights in relation to the migration of knowledge loss.