The anticipated emotional mechanism through which colleagues’ knowledge sourcing factors influence employee knowledge sharing

Purpose Facilitating employee knowledge exchange and leveraging the synergistic effects of organizational knowledge resources are essential for organizations to address complex problems and enhance creativity and competitiveness. This study aims to construct a multilevel model based on persuasion theory and emotion as feedback theory. It examines how colleagues’ knowledge sourcing factors influence employee knowledge sharing through anticipated emotions that have differentiated persuasive effects. Design/methodology/approach An event-based experience sampling method was used, which collected data on 461 knowledge sourcing events reported by 69 employees from various industries in China over 15 consecutive working days. The hypotheses were tested using confirmatory factor, convergence and cross-level regression analyses, and bootstrapping methods with Mplus and SPSS. Findings The task relevance of knowledge, relational quality with colleagues and knowledge-sharing climate positively influence employee knowledge sharing behavior through anticipated pride and guilt. The complexity of knowledge also exerts a positive, persuasive effect on employee knowledge sharing, but this effect is not mediated by anticipated pride and guilt. However, the privateness of knowledge negatively influences employee knowledge sharing behavior through anticipated pride and guilt. Originality/value This study systematically explains, at both the within- and between-individual levels, why employees are persuaded to adopt knowledge sharing strategies in response to colleagues’ knowledge sourcing. It innovatively explores the anticipated emotional process through which employees are persuaded to share knowledge. Finally, by examining organizational knowledge exchange events from a dyadic “colleague-employee” interaction perspective, it enhances the reliability of existing research findings and provides a more detailed depiction of the micro-processes involved in forming a positive organizational knowledge-sharing climate.