Practice what you preach: how and when does leaders’ information security policy compliance influence subordinates’ information sharing?
Zhe Zhang, Quanyi Gao · Journal of Knowledge Management · 2025
Purpose Leaders are crucial for fostering employees’ information sharing within organizations. However, limited attention has been given to the predictors of information sharing from the perspective of information security management. The purpose of this study is to address this gap by exploring whether, how, and when leaders’ information security policy compliance (leaders’ ISPC) increases subordinates’ information sharing. Design/methodology/approach The authors use a multi-study approach consisting of a scenario-based experiment (N = 160) and a three-wave field survey (N = 213) to examine the theoretical model. Findings The results show that leaders’ ISPC positively predicts subordinates’ information sharing through subordinates’ psychological safety. Information security policy effectiveness and subordinates’ disposition to value privacy (DTVP) strengthen the positive relationship between leaders’ ISPC and subordinates’ information sharing via subordinates’ psychological safety. Originality/value This study is among the first to identify leaders’ ISPC as a key antecedent in the information-sharing literature. By applying social information processing (SIP) theory, this study not only addresses existing theoretical gaps on the factors influencing information sharing but also unveils the underlying mechanism between them. This study introduces information security policy effectiveness and subordinates’ DTVP as two relatively new moderating variables, broadening the scope of boundary conditions and deepening both theoretical and empirical insights into the application of SIP theory in the context of information sharing.