Every coin has two sides: the impact of time pressure on employees’ knowledge hiding
Journal of Knowledge Management
ISSN: 1367-3270
Article publication date: 12 November 2021
Issue publication date: 5 September 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Time pressure is the most common kind of work pressure that employees face in the workplace; the existing research results on the effect of time pressure are highly controversial (positive, negative, inverted U-shaped). Especially in the era of knowledge economy, there remains a research gap in the impact of time pressure on individual knowledge hiding. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of different time pressure (challenge and hindrance) on knowledge hiding and to explain why there is controversy about the effect of time pressure in the academics.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collected two waves of data and surveyed 341 R&D employees in China. Moreover, they used regression analysis, bootstrapping and Johnson–Neyman statistical technique to verify research hypotheses.
Findings
The results show that challenge time pressure (CTP) has a significant negative effect on knowledge hiding, whereas hindrance time pressure (HTP) has a significant positive effect on knowledge hiding; job security mediates the relationship between time pressure and knowledge hiding; temporal leadership strengthen the positive impact of CTP on job security; temporal leadership can mitigate the negative impact of HTP on job security.
Originality/value
The findings not only respond to the academic debate about the effect of time pressure and point out the reasons for the controversy but also enhance the scholars’ attention and understanding of the internal mechanism between time pressure and knowledge hiding.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Journal of Knowledge Management section editor and four anonymous reviewers for their very constructive comments and suggestions throughout the review process. They also thank Tomoki Sekiguchi, Chenqian Xu for their very helpful comments on the earlier versions, and all participants in this research.Compliance with Ethical Standards: This paper and all authors compliance with Ethical Standards, we are willing to accept all responsibility for any violation of ethical standards in the study.Conflict of Interest: We declare that we have no conflicts of interest.Funding: This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71772138; 72072128), National Social Science Foundation of China (17BJY150) and China Scholarship Council (202006260311).
Citation
Zhang, X., Yao, Z., Qunchao, W. and Tsai, F.-S. (2022), "Every coin has two sides: the impact of time pressure on employees’ knowledge hiding", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 26 No. 8, pp. 2084-2106. https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-02-2021-0149
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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