Abstract

Many organisations have recognised that knowledge is the most important resource in today's economy. Although knowledge management is seen as central to process and product innovation and improvement, to executive decision making and to organisational adaptation and renewal, little is known on the effect of managerial power and relational trust on the traits and skills of knowledge acquisition. A survey of 140 first line managers was conducted to investigate the relationship between managerial power, relational trust and knowledge acquisition attributes. Results indicate that most, but not all, of the managerial power dimensions enable employees' knowledge acquisition. Moreover, the findings show that relational (interpersonal) trust had a negative effect on the skills and traits of knowledge acquisition. It was also found that the dimensions of managerial power provided statistically significant additional predictive power, after having statistically controlled for the predictive effects of interpersonal trust.