The Role of Transformational Leader on Knowledge Sharing Practices: A Study about International Hotel Chains

Especially during the last decade, Knowledge Sharing (KS) have become one of the most debated research topics within the growing amount of research on Knowledge Management (KM). As in all other business, KS practices are very important for hotels at providing proper service performance and gaining competitive advantage through unique knowledge. However, the number of studies conducted related to KS in the tourism and hospitality enterprises are still limited. To fully understand how KS practices can be perform successfully, KS processes and the effects of leaders on KS practices need to be explore in depth. Thus, this study primarily focuses on KS practices at international hotel chains (IHC) in which KS practices are more important compared to other hotels due to their geographically dispersed structure. Moreover, this study aims to determine the effects of transformational leaders on KS practices. Above all, this study consist important findings which are identifying KS process at IHC and emphasizing the importance of TL for the success of KS. For the purpose of the study, two hundred and twenty seven junior administrative and mid-level managers of 29 IHC operating in Turkey were chosen as the sample of this study. And, the required data were collected by questionnaire. Data analysis determined that KS practices are highly performed in IHC and TL have some important-positive effects on KS practices. Keywords: Knowledge sharing, Transformational leader, International hotel chai