Offense is the best defense: the impact of workplace bullying on knowledge hiding
Journal of Knowledge Management
ISSN: 1367-3270
Article publication date: 31 March 2020
Issue publication date: 27 May 2020
Abstract
Purpose
Workplace bullying is a common negative event suffered by employees in the workplace. The harm it brings to the organization has become the focus of the field of organizational behavior. The purpose of this study was to explore whether workplace bullying has an impact on employee knowledge hiding and to discover the underlying mechanism between the two.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the conservation of resource theory and the cognitive-affective personality system theory, this paper surveys 327R&D employees of Chinese technological corporations at two time points and explores the relationship between workplace bullying and knowledge hiding as well as the underlying mechanism. This study used confirmatory factor analysis, bootstrapping method and structural equation model to validate the research hypothesis.
Findings
The results show that workplace bullying positively correlates with knowledge hiding; emotional exhaustion and organizational identification play a mediation role between workplace bullying and knowledge hiding, and both variables play a chain mediation role in that relationship; and forgiveness climate moderates the positive impact of workplace bullying on emotional exhaustion, further moderating the chain mediation role of emotional exhaustion and organizational identification.
Originality/value
The findings of this study can not only complement the existing researches on the influence of negative workplace events on employees’ knowledge hiding behaviors but also strengthen scholars’ attention and understanding of the internal mechanism between workplace bullying and knowledge hiding.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research is funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant number 71772138; 71472137) and National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant number 17BJY150).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.
Citation
Yao, Z., Zhang, X., Luo, J. and Huang, H. (2020), "Offense is the best defense: the impact of workplace bullying on knowledge hiding", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 24 No. 3, pp. 675-695. https://doi.org/10.1108/JKM-12-2019-0755
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2020, Emerald Publishing Limited