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This study aims to explore the existence of knowledge sabotage in the contemporary organization from the perspective of the target.

This study collected and analyzed 172 critical incidents reported by 109 employees who were targets of knowledge sabotage in their organizations.

Over 50 per cent of employees experienced at least one knowledge sabotage incident. Knowledge sabotage is driven by three factors, namely, gratification, retaliation against other employees and one’s malevolent personality. Knowledge saboteurs are more likely to provide intangible than tangible knowledge. Knowledge sabotage results in extremely negative consequences for individuals, organizations and third parties. Organizations often indirectly facilitate knowledge sabotage among their employees. Both knowledge saboteurs and their targets believe in their innocence – saboteurs are certain that their action was a necessary response to targets’ inappropriate workplace behavior, whereas targets insist on their innocence and hold saboteurs solely responsible.

Organizations should recruit employees with compatible personalities and working styles, introduce inter-employee conflict prevention and resolution procedures, develop anti-knowledge sabotage policies, clearly articulate the individual and organizational consequences of knowledge sabotage and eliminate zero-sum game-based incentives and rewards.

This is the first study documenting knowledge sabotage from the target’s perspective.

This paper introduces the concept of knowledge sabotage as an extreme form of counterproductive knowledge behavior, presents its typology, and empirically demonstrates its existence in the contemporary organization.

Through the application of the critical incident technique, this study analyzes 177 knowledge sabotage incidents when employees intentionally provided others with wrong knowledge or deliberately concealed critical knowledge while clearly realizing others’ need for this knowledge and others’ ability to apply it to important work-related tasks.

Over 40% of employees engaged in knowledge sabotage, and many did so repeatedly. Knowledge saboteurs usually acted against their fellow co-workers, and one-half of all incidents were caused by interpersonal issues resulting from the target’s hostile behavior, failure to provide assistance to others, and poor performance. Knowledge sabotage was often expressed in the form of revenge against a particular individual, who, as a result, may have been reprimanded, humiliated or terminated. Knowledge saboteurs rarely regretted their behavior, which further confirmed the maliciousness of their intentions.

Even though knowledge saboteurs only rarely acted against their organizations purposely, approximately one-half of all incidents produced negative, unintentional consequences to their organizations, such as time waste, failed or delayed projects, lost clients, unnecessary expenses, hiring costs, products being out-of-stock, understaffing, or poor quality of products or services. Organizations should develop comprehensive knowledge sabotage prevention policies. The best way to reduce knowledge sabotage is to improve inter-personal relationships among employees and to foster a friendly and collaborative environment.

This is the first well-documented attempt to understand the phenomenon of knowledge sabotage.

Based on social cognitive theory, this study aims to explore the influence of supervisor bottom-line mentality (SBLM) on employee knowledge behavior (knowledge territorial behavior and knowledge sabotage behavior). The study first investigates the role of an ethical decision-making mechanism (moral disengagement) in mediating this relationship. In addition, it considers the possible boundary conditions to supplement research on the influence of SBLM in the knowledge management field.

The authors collected 256 data points from employees across three stages using convenience sampling. The authors then tested the proposed hypothesis using hierarchical regression and bootstrap methods.

The results demonstrated that SBLM promotes employees’ moral disengagement, leading to more knowledge territorial behavior and knowledge sabotage behavior. Furthermore, high power distance orientation among employees exacerbates the ill effects of SBLM according to the first stage of a moderated mediation model. Employees with such an orientation are more likely to respond to a SBLM by exhibiting a higher level of moral disengagement, thus increasing their knowledge territorial behavior and knowledge sabotage behavior.

Research on the influence of SBLM in the knowledge management field is limited. This study not only clarifies the relationships between SBLM and two types of knowledge behavior (knowledge territorial behavior and knowledge sabotage behavior) but also enriches the research on the antecedents of these two types of knowledge behavior.

This study aims to propose and test a model explicating the antecedents and consequences of knowledge sabotage.

Data obtained from 330 employees working in the Turkish retail and telecommunication sectors were analyzed by means of the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling technique.

Co-worker knowledge sabotage is the key factor driving knowledge sabotage behavior of individual employees, followed by co-worker incivility. Interactional justice suppresses individual knowledge sabotage, while supervisor incivility does not affect it. Co-worker knowledge sabotage reduces job satisfaction of other employees, which, in turn, triggers their voluntary turnover intention. Contrary to a popular belief that perpetrators generally benefit from their organizational misbehavior, the findings indicate that knowledge saboteurs suffer from the consequences of their action because they find it mentally difficult to stay in their current organization. Employees understate their own knowledge sabotage engagement and/or overstate that of others.

Managers should realize that interactional justice is an important mechanism that can thwart knowledge sabotage behavior, promote a civil organizational culture, develop proactive approaches to reduce co-worker incivility and strive towards a zero rate of knowledge sabotage incidents in their organizations. Co-worker incivility and co-worker knowledge sabotage in the workplace are possible inhibitors of intraorganizational knowledge flows and are starting points for job dissatisfaction, which may increase workers’ turnover intention.

This study is among the first to further our knowledge on the cognitive mechanisms linking interactional justice and uncivil organizational behavior with knowledge sabotage and employee outcomes.

This study empirically tests the impact of the Dark Triad personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) and co-worker competitiveness on knowledge sabotage.

A model was constructed and tested by means of Partial Least Squares with data from 150 participants recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

The individual personality traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy are significant predictors of individual knowledge sabotage behavior, whereas co-worker Machiavellianism and psychopathy trigger co-worker knowledge sabotage. Out of the three Dark Triad traits, individual and co-worker psychopathy emerged as the strongest knowledge sabotage predictor. Co-worker competitiveness has a positive effect on co-workers’ knowledge sabotage behavior. There is a relatively strong relationship between co-worker and individual knowledge sabotage which suggests that knowledge sabotage is a form of contagious workplace behavior. Individuals underestimate their negative behavior and traits and/or overestimate those of their fellow co-workers.

Managers should realize that the Dark Triad personality traits could predispose certain individuals to engage in extremely harmful counterproductive knowledge behavior. They need to ensure that individuals with these traits are not hired or are identified during their probation periods. It is recommended that organizations include knowledge sabotage measures in their periodic employee surveys. Organizations should help their employees objectively re-evaluate their own traits and knowledge behavior as well as those of their colleagues to ensure that their reciprocating knowledge behavior is more aligned with the reality in their organization.

This study offers a reliable and valid quantitative survey instrument to measure the presence of knowledge sabotage.

Drawing on the microfoundations theory and rational choice sociology, this study aims to investigate knowledge-sharing microfoundations through knowledge sabotage behaviours in the workplace. As such, it aims to shed light on the adverse impact of knowledge sabotage on a knowledge-sharing climate.

As a quantitative deductive study, it is based on information collected from 329 employees of European companies by self-administered online surveys. Data validity and reliability has been assessed through a confirmatory factor analysis, and data analysis was carried out by using a covariance-based structural equation modelling technique.

The findings from the empirical investigation supported the baseline hypotheses of the multilevel conceptual model, which is the positive relationship between organizational trust and environmental knowledge sharing. Then, recurring to a microfoundational exploration, this study supports the mediating indirect effect of job satisfaction and knowledge sabotage in affecting knowledge sharing as a social outcome.

This study concurs to broaden knowledge-sharing awareness among scholars and practitioners, by focusing on knowledge sabotage as its most pernicious counterproductive behaviour. Furthermore, this research provides valuable guidance for the future development of research based on multilevel investigations.

This study builds on the need to explore the numerous factors that affect knowledge sharing in economic organizations, specifically focusing on knowledge sabotage. Adapting Coleman’s bathtub, the authors advance the first multilevel conceptual model used to unveil the knowledge-sharing microfoundations from the perspective of a counterproductive knowledge behaviour.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the phenomenon of knowledge transfer between employees and coworkers. That is, when and why employees engage in knowledge seeking or knowledge sabotage when confronted with coworkers with higher relative overqualification.

This study collected survey data from 315 employee-coworker pairs in East China at three-time points.

The results showed that when the cooperative goal interdependence between employee and coworker is high, the perception of coworker’s relative overqualification will cause benign envy of employees, which in turn promote employees to engage in knowledge seeking from coworker. However, when the competitive goal interdependence between employee and coworker is high, the perception of coworker’s relative overqualification will cause malicious envy of employees, which in turn promote employees to engage in knowledge sabotage toward coworker.

This research not only expands the theoretical perspective and outcomes of relative overqualification but also enriches the mechanism of knowledge seeking and knowledge sabotage. Meanwhile, this study also provides practical guidance for enterprises to reduce knowledge sabotage.

This study investigates the role of personality disorders in the context of counterproductive knowledge behavior.

Data were collected through a survey administered to 120 full-time employees recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Personality disorders were measured by means of the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-IV.

Personality disorders play an important role in the context of counterproductive knowledge behavior: employees suffering from various personality disorders are likely to hide knowledge from their fellow coworkers and engage in knowledge sabotage. Of particular importance are dependent, narcissistic and sadistic personality disorders as well as schizophrenic and delusional severe clinical syndromes. There is a need for a paradigm shift in terms of how the research community should portray those who engage in counterproductive knowledge behavior, reconsidering the underlying assumption that all of them act deliberately, consciously and rationally. Unexpectedly, most personality disorders do not facilitate knowledge hoarding.

Organizations should provide insurance coverage for the treatment of personality disorders, assist those seeking treatment, inform employees about the existence of personality disorders in the workplace and their impact on interemployee relationships, facilitate a stress-free work environment, remove social stigma that may be associated with personality disorders and, as a last resort, reassign workers suffering from extreme forms of personality disorders to tasks that require less interemployee interaction (instead of terminating them).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work represents one of the first attempts to empirically investigate the notion of personality disorders in the context of knowledge management.

The purpose of this Real Impact Research Article is to empirically explore one of the most controversial and elusive concepts in knowledge management research – practical wisdom. It develops a 10-dimensional practical wisdom construct and tests it within the nomological network of counterproductive and productive knowledge behavior.

A survey instrument was created based on the extant literature. A model was developed and tested by means of Partial Least Squares with data obtained from 200 experienced employees recruited from CloudResearch Connect crowdsourcing platform.

Practical wisdom is a multidimensional construct that may be operationalized and measured like other well-established knowledge management concepts. Practical wisdom guides employee counterproductive and productive knowledge behavior: it suppresses knowledge sabotage and knowledge hiding (whether general, evasive, playing dumb, rationalized or bullying) and promotes knowledge sharing. While all proposed dimensions contribute to employee practical wisdom, particularly salient are subject matter expertise, moral purpose in decision-making, self-reflection in the workplace and external reflection in the workplace. Unexpectedly, practical wisdom facilitates knowledge hoarding instead of reducing it.

Managers should realize that possessing practical wisdom is not limited to a group of select, high-level executives. Organizations may administer the practical wisdom questionnaire presented in this study to their workers to identify those who score the lowest, and invest in employee training programs that focus on the development of those attributes pertaining to the practical wisdom dimensions.

The concept of practical wisdom is a controversial topic that has both detractors and supporters. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first large-scale empirical study of practical wisdom in the knowledge management domain.

Artificial intelligence (AI) will be performing 52% of the tasks in companies by 2025. The increasing adoption of AI is generating technological turbulence in the business environment. Previous studies have also shown that employees are aware of the high risk of losing their jobs when being replaced by AI. The risk of employees engaging in opportunistic behaviors, such as knowledge hiding, is thus fairly high. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyze the mediating effect of employee’s AI awareness on the relationship between technological turbulence generated by AI and the three types of knowledge hiding: evasive hiding, playing dumb and rationalized hiding.

Structural equations by the partial least squares method were used to test the proposed research model.

The most interesting finding is that employee’s AI and robotics awareness fulfills almost all mediating functions in the relationship between technological turbulence generated by AI and the three types of knowledge hiding.

The results show that knowledge hiding in the digital age is first and foremost a strategy by employees to sabotage and induce failure in process automation, to reduce the risk of being replaced in the workplace by AI. This study indicates that employees are willing to hide knowledge in all possible ways when perception that AI is a threat to their job increases. In other words, technological turbulence generated by AI and employee’s AI awareness are the two great new triggers of knowledge hiding in the digital age.