The role of employee trust in the relationship between leaders' aggressive humor and knowledge sharing

Abstract EN

Purpose-The current paper aims to examine leaders’ aggressive humor's influence on knowledge-sharing among hotel employees.

Employee Trust is also tested as a moderator variable between this association.

Design / methodology– An online questionnaire of 387 customer-contact employees of 38 five-star hotels located in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt provided data on the moderating role of trust in aggressive humor- knowledge-sharing relationships.

Using the SEM by the PLS method by SmartPLS3 program, the data were analyzed, and the hypotheses were tested.

Findings– Aggressive humor is negatively related to knowledge-sharing among hotel employees.

Results also confirm the intervening role of trust as a moderator in the relationship between aggressive humor and knowledge-sharing.

Practical implications-The results underscore the trust variable's benefits as a moderator in the relationship between aggressive humor and knowledge-sharing.

Originality / value – This paper developed a model for the moderating effect of trust on the association between aggressive humor and knowledge-sharing.

Thus, the study fills part of the gap dearth of studies that have examined the impact of negative humor in the workplace