From Sustainable Leadership to Sustainable Performance: A Moderated–Mediation Model of Organizational Commitment and Knowledge Sharing

Increasing stakeholder pressures and environmental uncertainty require organizations to move beyond short-term financial outcomes and pursue sustainable performance. Despite the growing interest in sustainable leadership, the mechanisms and conditions under which this leadership approach is associated with sustainable performance have not yet been sufficiently clarified. This study examines the relationships between sustainable leadership and sustainable performance within a framework that incorporates the mediating role of organizational commitment and the moderating role of intra-organizational knowledge sharing. The research model was tested using data obtained from 399 employees working in SMEs operating in Türkiye through a convenience sampling approach, and the hypotheses were examined using PROCESS Macro Model 14 with a bootstrapping procedure (5000 resamples). The findings indicate that sustainable leadership is positively associated with sustainable performance and organizational commitment. Furthermore, organizational commitment is positively associated with sustainable performance and partially mediates the relationship between sustainable leadership and performance. In addition, intra-organizational knowledge sharing strengthens this indirect relationship, such that higher levels of knowledge sharing are associated with a stronger indirect effect. These findings suggest that sustainable performance is not solely a direct outcome of leadership behaviors but is associated with the interaction between employees’ relational bonds with the organization and knowledge-based processes. By integrating the natural resource-based view, social exchange theory, and the knowledge-based view, the study offers a conditional process perspective that is consistent with the observed relationships and contributes to the literature by providing a more integrated and contextually grounded understanding.