From Knowledge Sharing To Innovation and Productivity: Empirical Evidence From Higher Education Lecturers

Abstract

Higher education institutions increasingly rely on lecturers’ ability to generate innovative practices and sustain high levels of academic productivity in teaching, research, and scholarly engagement. Despite these expectations, empirical evidence explaining how collaborative and psychological factors jointly shape academic outcomes remains limited. This study examines the roles of knowledge sharing, self-efficacy, and self-leadership in influencing innovative work behaviour and academic productivity among lecturers in higher education institutions. Using survey data collected from 312 lecturers from public and private institutions in the Klang Valley, Malaysia, the study employs Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to analyse the proposed relationships. The findings reveal that knowledge sharing and self-efficacy significantly predict innovative work behaviour and academic productivity, while self-leadership demonstrates a more nuanced role within the proposed model. Knowledge sharing emerged as the strongest predictor of academic productivity. The results highlight the importance of fostering collaborative academic environments and strengthening lecturers’ psychological resources and self-regulatory capabilities to enhance innovation and productivity in higher education. This study contributes empirical evidence to the higher education literature by demonstrating how social, psychological, and self-regulatory factors interact to influence academic outcomes within a Malaysian context.