Chapter 7: Human Resource Management, Leadership and Knowledge Management: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Human resource management (HRM), leadership and knowledge management (KM) are three important organisational processes that impact organisational, team-, unit- and individual-level outcomes (Pellegrini et al., 2020; Zhao et al., 2020). They are all concerned with the management of people even though they take different perspectives and approaches to this important endeavour (Leroy et al., 2018). HRM takes, as its central concern, the design and implementation of systems, processes and practices that influence the motivation, behaviours and attitudes of people to achieve important organisational goals (Lievens, 2015; Svetlik and Stavrou-Costea, 2007). Leadership, as an area of investigation, emphasises exploration of the personal and interpersonal dynamics of how individuals at various levels within an organisation influence people, or followers, to achieve important collective or organisational goals (Boada-Cuerva et al., 2019; Northhouse, 2015). KM is concerned with the management of organisational knowledge including organisational routines and practices related to ‘handling knowledge’ including its creation, external acquisition, internal utilisation and integration into the organisational system (Carmeli et al., 2013; Natalicchio et al., 2017). What becomes apparent is that these three organisational processes share common and overlapping goals; they are multi-level concepts, and they interact with one another in significant ways to impact organisational outcomes (Chang, 2016; von Krogh et al., 2012).