Altruistic Leadership: The Power Of Knowledge Creation

AbstractKnowledge creation is presented as a strong change of power within an organization structure. A knowledge framework must be built in order to understand how leadership arises. Leadership is built upon a four-phase process of organizational knowledge creation (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995) as well as both an ontological (levels of knowledge) and an epistemological (tacit and explicit knowledge) dimension. Thus, two leaderships are identified: change and altruistic. This paper establishes a relationship between Herbert Simon's sociability concept and Nonaka and Takeuchi's socialization process in order to define an altruistic behavior in organizational leadership. Organization needs altruistic leaders in order to create a balanced firm once knowledge creation has been developed by the change leader. The need for altruistic leadership is the consequence of the power of knowledge creation.