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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 the relationship between competitive personality (CMP) and rationalized knowledge hiding (KH) and to explore the mediating effects of knowledge-based psychological ownership (KPO) and organization-based PO (OPO) by developing a mediating framework.

Data were collected from the ordinary employees of listed companies in China (2022) via a Web-based survey. The total number of valid samples was 337. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to test the reliability and validity of the constructs, and structural equation modeling was used to verify the direct and mediating effects.

The findings revealed a positive relationship between CMP and rationalized KH (RKH). KPO plays a positive mediating role between CMP and RKH, whereas OPO plays a negative mediating role between CMP and RKH.

First, although the questionnaire collection is split into two sessions to reduce common method variation, there is inevitably some risk, as the questionnaires are all reported by the same respondent. Second, this study examined the effects of CMP on RKH based on the Chinese cultural context, but the applicability of this finding to cross-cultural contexts warrants further study. In the future, researchers can conduct cross-cultural comparisons to determine the generalizability of the findings.

This study helps managers to better identify the RKH behaviors that exist in organizations, understand the reasons and processes behind employees’ KH and facilitate more effective knowledge management by managers.

This study uses CMP as an important indicator of employees’ RKH behavior, enriches the research related to the antecedent variables of RKH and reveals the influence mechanism between CMP and RKH from the perspective of PO, and the findings can help researchers and managers understand the process and antecedents of RKH so that timely interventions can be implemented.

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 study aims to develop a framework that demonstrates the role of social capital in alleviating knowledge hiding behaviour in organisations while also considering the moderating roles of perceived organisational politics and the perceived value of knowledge in this process.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review of research papers on the topic of knowledge hiding to develop a framework for mitigating knowledge hiding.

This paper conceptualises social capital into three interrelated dimensions (e.g. structural, cognitive and relational). Based on the findings of the review, all the three social capital dimensions can potentially mitigate an individual’s propensity towards knowledge hiding. Additionally, the paper integrates two potential moderators: perceived organisational politics and perceived value of knowledge, which could undermine the outcomes of social capital in mitigating knowledge hiding.

Although the proposed framework may provide preliminary insights to practitioners and scholars, one of its key limitations is that it is conceptual. Future empirical research is needed to validate the proposed framework.

Existing research has focused on studying the antecedents and consequences of knowledge hiding. However, scant scholarly work explores how such behaviour can be mitigated. This paper addresses this gap and contributes to understanding how organisations can alleviate the prevalence of knowledge hiding by developing their social capital and by focusing on contextual factors.

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.

Drawing upon psychological ownership theory, the aim of this study was to uncover the coexisting mediating effects of knowledge sharing and hiding on the relationship between employees’ organizational psychological ownership (OPO) and their innovative work behavior (IWB). The moderating role of organizational context in these mediating relationships was further examined to determine the moderated mediation paths.

This study mainly used a survey-based research method and collected data from 512 professionals from both public and private organizations in Pakistan to test our proposed hypotheses.

The results showed that coexisting knowledge sharing and hiding mediated the relationship between employees’ OPO and IWB. Furthermore, organizational context moderated the mediated relationships, providing support for the moderated mediation framework.

The results highlight the significance of fostering employees’ OPO to enhance their IWB by promoting knowledge sharing and preventing knowledge hiding. This study also urges managers to consider the contingency effect of organizational contexts when promoting employees’ IWB in emerging economies.

The results obtained in this study suggest that the knowledge behavior paradox occurs in organizations, and distinct organizational contexts play crucial but differential roles in intervening in the effect of employees’ OPO on their IWB. This study empirically validated this complex mechanism in an important emerging economy in Asia.

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.