Responsible leadership and deceptive knowledge hiding: the mediating role of moral reflectiveness and the moderating role of leader-follower value congruence
Abstract
Purpose
The key to preventing employees from engaging in deceptive knowledge hiding is fostering a responsible environment. Drawing on social cognitive theory, this study aims to explore the factors that inhibit deceptive knowledge hiding and to construct potential pathways for enhancing individual moral cognition. This study further analyzes the moderating effect of leader–follower value congruence on these relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
Using data from 341 full-time employees in various service industries in China, this study conducted path analysis, the product-of-coefficients method and bootstrapping to test the hypotheses through a three-stage, time-lagged survey.
Findings
The empirical results show that responsible leadership is negatively associated with employees’ deceptive knowledge hiding. Employee moral reflectiveness mediates this relationship, whereas leader–follower value congruence moderates the indirect effect of responsible leadership on deceptive knowledge hiding through moral reflectiveness.
Originality/value
First, this study extends field research by introducing positive leadership factors to reduce deceptive knowledge hiding, whereas prior studies focused mainly on negative leadership antecedents. Second, this study sheds light on the underlying moral cognitive mechanisms and explains how responsible leadership can prevent implicit unethical behavior. Third, it reveals how leader–follower value congruence can enhance the impact of responsible leadership on moral reflectiveness, offering novel insights into the role of value-based fit in reducing deceptive knowledge hiding.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the reviewers and editors for their invaluable support and guidance.
Funding: Research funding was provided by Huaqiao University’s Academic Project supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (23SKGC-QT05).
Compliance with ethical standards Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Ethical approval: This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.
Citation
He, P., Zhou, H., Jiang, C., Anand, A. and Zhou, Q. (2024), "Responsible leadership and deceptive knowledge hiding: the mediating role of moral reflectiveness and the moderating role of leader-follower value congruence", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-02-2023-0160
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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