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The purpose of this paper is to examine why and when employees hide knowledge. Individuals may tend to hide knowledge when they have strong psychological ownership feelings over knowledge. Therefore, this research builds and tests a theoretical model linking knowledge‐based psychological ownership with knowledge hiding via territoriality.

Data were collected from knowledge workers in China via a three‐wave web‐based survey. The final sample was 190 cases. Hierarchical regression models and a bootstrapping approach were used to test the hypotheses.

The results show that knowledge‐based psychological ownership positively affects knowledge hiding. Territoriality fully mediates the link between knowledge‐based psychological ownership and knowledge hiding. Moreover, organization‐based psychological ownership moderates the positive link between territoriality and knowledge hiding. Specifically, territoriality will mediate the indirect effect of knowledge‐based psychological ownership on knowledge hiding when organization‐based psychological ownership is low, but not when it is high.

The research reflects that to reduce knowledge hiding, organizations should focus on practices that can decrease employees' self‐perception of possession of knowledge and territoriality and that can strengthen employees' psychological ownership for organizations.

Although many actions have been adopted to foster knowledge management in companies, knowledge hiding is still prevalent in work settings. This paper highlights the predictive power of knowledge‐based psychological ownership on knowledge hiding, and the mediating role of territoriality in the link between knowledge‐based psychological ownership and knowledge hiding.

This paper aims to examine how ethical leadership alleviates knowledge contribution loafing among engineering designers through the mediating effect of knowledge-based psychological ownership and the moderating effect of emotion regulation strategies.

This study adopts a questionnaire survey to obtain 344 valid sample from engineering designers and uses partial least squares-structural equation modeling to analyze data.

The results demonstrate that ethical leadership is a key factor to alleviate knowledge contribution loafing. Knowledge-based psychological ownership is a main factor causing knowledge contribution loafing and mediates the influence of ethical leadership on knowledge contribution loafing. Furthermore, cognitive reappraisal (a response-focused emotion regulation strategy) moderates the relationship between ethical leadership and knowledge contribution loafing, and the effect of ethical leadership on knowledge contribution loafing is stronger when cognitive reappraisal is high.

Engineering design organizations may inspire ethical leadership and pay attention to psychological state of designers. Leaders may help designers overcome knowledge-based psychological ownership by the influence of ethical leadership. During the process of knowledge interaction, designers may adopt cognitive reappraisal strategy consciously.

This study addresses the knowledge gap that ethical leadership affects knowledge contribution loafing with knowledge-based psychological ownership as the intermediary. This study also advances the literature on leadership and emotion regulation and extends the scope of social learning theory in knowledge management domain through examining the moderate role of emotion regulation strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the meditating role of psychological ownership which includes both organisation-based psychological ownership (OPO) and knowledge-based psychological ownership (KPO) on the relationship between affective commitment and knowledge sharing.

This paper is an empirical study based on structural equation modelling, with a sample of 293 employees from 31 high-technology firms in China.

The result indicated that affective commitment had a significant positive effect on OPO but no effect on KPO; OPO was positively related to both common and key knowledge sharing, while KPO exerted a negative impact on both; common knowledge sharing was positively related to key knowledge sharing; the relationship between affective commitment and key knowledge sharing was multi-mediated by OPO and common knowledge sharing.

OPO and KPO play an essential role in transferring the effect of employees’ affective commitment to common knowledge sharing and key knowledge sharing, which unravels the blackbox of how effective commitment affects knowledge sharing.

The purpose of this paper is to examine why employees hide knowledge and how organizations intervene and influence the negative effects of knowledge hiding. This study builds and tests a theoretical model at both individual and team level.

Data were collected from universities, research institutes and enterprises’ research and development (R&D) teams in China via a two-wave survey. The final sample contained 417 cases. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to test hypotheses.

The results show that territoriality plays a mediating role between psychological ownership and knowledge hiding, and that organizational result justice negatively moderated the relationship between territoriality and knowledge hiding. Procedure justice negatively moderated the relationship between territoriality and rationalized hiding, and that between territoriality and evasive hiding. Interactive justice negatively moderated the relationship between territoriality and rationalized hiding, and that between territoriality and evasive hiding. There were thus interactive effects among territoriality, perceived knowledge value and psychological ownership; the relationship between individual psychological ownership and territoriality was weaker when perceived knowledge value was lower and task interdependence was higher, and stronger with higher perceived knowledge value and lower task interdependence.

Territorial behaviors, such as knowledge hoarding and misleading within R&D teams, are the primary challenges for organizations’ positive activities, including internal sharing, teamwork and organizational goal accomplishment. Researching knowledge territoriality in the Chinese cultural context will help to distinguish territorial behaviors and to take preventive measures. In addition, this study not only enables managers to understand clearly the precipitating factors of knowledge territoriality and the relationships among them but also provides constructive strategies for reducing the negative effect of organizational intervention in knowledge territoriality.

This study adopts a multilevel modeling method and not only reveals the “black box” of interaction among psychological ownership, territoriality and knowledge hiding at the individual level but also probes the three-way interaction of perceived knowledge value, team task dependency and psychological ownership with territoriality at both individual and team levels, and then discusses the mediation effect of organizational justice on the relationship between territoriality and knowledge hiding. The conclusion of this study not only enriches the literature on knowledge hiding in the field of knowledge management but also helps to elucidate the function and intervention mechanism of knowledge hiding.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the curvilinear relationship between knowledge leadership and knowledge hiding and the moderating role of psychological ownership on influencing the curvilinear relationship.

In total, 403 data were collected from participants in a high-technology company via a two-wave survey. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

Results revealed an inverted U-shaped relationship between knowledge leadership and knowledge hiding. The employees exhibited more knowledge hiding in a moderate level of knowledge leadership than in lower and higher levels of knowledge leadership. Moreover, psychological ownership significantly moderated the curvilinear relationship such that the inverted U-shaped relationship was more pronounced among employees with high psychological ownership.

Employees’ reaction to knowledge leadership may vary from different levels of knowledge leadership. Moreover, organizations should boost employees’ psychological ownership especially for the collective identity that helps them own knowledge as “ours.”

This study extends both the leadership and knowledge management behavior literatures.

This paper aims to explore the psychological process by which front-line employees (FLEs) in hospitality firms make decisions on hiding knowledge.

A qualitative methodology was used, with triangulated data collection from six different types of hospitality firms. By using the thematic analysis approach, a conceptual framework consisting of seven main themes was constructed to reflect the replicable logic of an individual’s knowledge exchange decision-making in various situations.

This study proposes a theoretical framework describing how hotel employees evaluate the cost and benefit of knowledge exchange implicitly. Using this framework, this paper illustrates the strategies that FLEs use to make a bounded-rational decision on knowledge exchange in situations characterized by time constraints and limited information.

Hotel managers can use the psychological process presented in this paper to better understand how FLEs make knowledge-hiding decisions in the workplace. Furthermore, specific measures are suggested to reduce FLEs’ knowledge-hiding behaviors in each stage of their knowledge exchange decision process.

This paper uncovers the psychological process of individuals’ decision-making regarding hiding knowledge from others in the hotel context, thus increasing the understanding of the rationale of FLEs’ knowledge hiding behaviors from the perspective of bounded-rational decision theory.

This study aims to explore the transmission mechanism of individual idea generation on team idea implementation and elucidate the relationships among team knowledge territoriality, team information exchange and team trust, which can better improve team knowledge sharing, decrease individual knowledge hiding or territoriality and assist the team in solving the predicament of idea implementation.

The data were collected by the paired method from 56 Chinese companies’ R&D teams, which comprised 356 valid samples. Besides, structure equitation modeling and hierarchical linear modeling were used to test the hypotheses.

Team knowledge territoriality had a significant positive impact on individual idea generation, team information exchange and team idea implementation. Team information exchange mediated the relationship between team knowledge territoriality and team idea implementation. Moreover, team information exchange positively moderated the relationship between team knowledge territoriality and individual idea generation. Furthermore, the relationship between individual idea generation and team idea implementation was mediated by team trust.

This study augments the theoretical research of territoriality and innovation process. From the viewpoint of knowledge territoriality to describe the coexistence of knowledge sharing and knowledge hiding in the organization, this study reveals the influence mechanism of team knowledge territoriality on team innovation process. Overall, this study provides empirical support that team territoriality can weaken the adverse impact of individual territoriality on innovation to a certain extent.

Drawing on the theories of social capital and leader–member exchange (LMX), the authors examined the moderated mediation relationships of psychological ownership and perceived supervisory support on social capital and organizational knowledge.

To test the proposed model, the authors collected data from 522 employees working in large corporations in South Korea.

The authors found that (a) social capital was positively related to organizational knowledge sharing, (b) perceived supervisor support mediated the linkage between social capital and knowledge sharing and (c) psychological ownership moderated the indirect effect of social capital on knowledge sharing through perceived supervisor support, such that the indirect effect was stronger for employees with low rather than high psychological ownership.

This study sheds new light on how the nature of relationship between the leader and followers as well as individual's psychological ownership play a crucial role in knowledge sharing.

Knowledge sharing (KS) has been consistently acknowledged as a critical factor in the organizational development and the betterment of employees. The purpose of this paper is to extend previous empirical research on KS by testing psychological ownership as an underlying mechanism between the relationship of organizational justice (OJ) and KS behavior in developing country context. The authors also examine the moderating role of perceived organizational support (POS) between psychological ownership and KS behavior.

Using a survey questionnaire, data from 348 employees of multinational corporations in Pakistan were used to test the research hypotheses.

The results of this research reveal that dimensions of OJ (procedural, distributive and interactional justice) positively influence psychological ownership. In addition, psychological ownership is found as an underlying psychological mechanism between the relationship of OJ and KS behavior. The results also indicate that a higher level of POS strengthens the relationship between psychological ownership and KS behavior.

Organizations can enhance employees’ sense of psychological ownership by providing them fairness in procedures and resources. Moreover, management can create a perception of equality among the employees which subsequently helps employees engage in sharing their valuable knowledge with their team members and other workers in the organization.

This research suggests that psychological ownership and POS are important factors which influence the relationship between OJ and KS behavior and it empirically tests this model in a developing country context.

This study systematically reviews the literature on psychological ownership theory since its inception 30 years ago. Psychological ownership describes why and how individuals inform their identities by taking ownership. The authors provide guidance and support to management scholars to access the field and make meaningful contributions to the literature.

A variety of bibliometric techniques for performance analyses and science mapping is implemented to examine quantitative bibliographic data of 178 studies on psychological ownership. The data are obtained from Web of Science. The VOSviewer science mapping framework is employed to perform the analyses.

Co-authorship, citation and keyword co-occurrence networks indicate the social structures, most influential authors, publications and journals, as well as topics of past research and avenues for future investigation in the field of psychological ownership. While the authors of the seminal studies Pierce et al. (2001, 2003) have shaped the field over the past decades, the future of psychological ownership research requires stronger collaborations across the globe to advance the field from the individual level to the group and organization level.

This study is the first to comprehensively analyze the management literature on psychological ownership from a historical perspective using a systematic approach, bibliometric procedures and quantitative data. Insightful guidance and avenues for future investigation are offered to move psychological ownership research forward.