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Knowledge hiding, intentionally withholding work-relevant information, is detrimental to organizations, yet practiced by supervisors and employees. Based on social learning and social exchange theories, this study aims to uncover the effects of supervisor knowledge hiding, abusive supervision and employee political skill on employee knowledge hiding behaviors, namely, evasive hiding, playing dumb and rationalized hiding. We compare the two destructive supervisor behaviors in their predictive values toward employee knowledge hiding and examine the role of employee political skill in mitigating their effects.

Based on survey data collected from 598 German-speaking employees, we used path analysis to test the hypotheses.

The two destructive supervisor behaviors and employee political skill predicted employee evasive hiding and playing dumb; supervisor knowledge hiding additionally predicted employee rationalized hiding. The predictive value of supervisor knowledge hiding was 2.5 times larger than that of abusive supervision and political skill. The effects of destructive supervisor behaviors were weaker for more politically skilled employees.

We examine two destructive supervisor behaviors conjointly and show the differences between them regarding their predictive value toward employee knowledge hiding. Furthermore, we investigate the role of political skill in knowledge hiding.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between knowledge-hiding behaviors (evasive hiding, playing dumb and rationalized hiding) and employees’ silence (defensive silence, relational silence and ineffectual silence). Besides, this paper investigates the relation mediated by psychological contract breach.

The data were collected with three-time lags (40 days each) through a structured questionnaire from 389 employees of registered software houses in Pakistan. The structural equation modeling (partial least squares) approach is used for data analysis.

The findings of this study confirm that knowledge-hiding behaviors have a significant and positive relationship with employees’ silence, and psychological contract breach significantly mediates the relationship between knowledge-hiding behaviors and employees’ silence.

The implications of this study are very supportive to the knowledge-intensive organizations, i.e. software houses. The management should increase the knowledge sharing and trust culture among employees to discourage the knowledge-hiding behaviors among employees. Moreover, supervisors should develop trust among employees, motivate them to avoid knowledge hiding and encourage the employees to raise their voices against their problems in a formal way.

The present study highlights the impact of different dimensions of knowledge hiding on employees’ silence and the role of psychological contract breach as a mediator in this scenario.

This study aims to examine the effect of knowledge hiding (KH) on organizational citizenship behavior toward individuals (OCBI) through the mediation of self-conscious emotions (SCE), namely, shame and guilt. This paper further considers the supervisor’s Islamic work ethics (IWE) as a conditional variable.

In this quantity-based research, this paper collected data from 473 employees working in various service and manufacturing organizations through Google form at two-lags.

The study applied structural equation modeling and identified that employees experience SCE due to KH. More specifically, rationalized hiding was found to have a negative effect, whereas playing dumb and evasive hiding was found to have a positive effect on shame and guilt. The results also revealed SCE (shame and guilt) as mediators between KH and OCBI. Further, the supervisor’s IWE was found to be a conditional variable to strengthen the association between KH and SCE.

The study collected data from a single source. However, the issue of common method variance was tackled through time-lags.

The study suggests that supervisors must communicate with employees about the negative outcomes of KH. They must create such an environment that discourages the engagement of employees in KH and encourages the employees to engage themselves in helping behaviors to maintain a productive and creative work environment.

This study adds to the limited literature on the emotional consequences of KH from knowledge hiders’ perspective and unfolds the behavior-emotion-behavior sequence through the emotional pathway. More specifically, this study examined the negative emotional effect of hiding the knowledge that leads to compensatory strategy (organizational citizenship behavior) through SCE (shame and guilt). Finally, zooming into SCE, this study elucidates the supervisor’s IWE as a conditional variable.

This paper aims to investigate the direct relationship between person-related workplace bullying and dimensions of knowledge hiding. In addition, this study also intends to explore how relational psychological contract breach (RPCB) mediates bulling and knowledge hiding.

This study has used a survey-based research design to collect the data. The data were collected in three-time lags from 494 individuals working in IT-based firms (software houses) located in Pakistan. The data were analyzed through the variance-based structural equation modeling technique. For this purpose, the authors used SmartPLS3 software.

This study revealed that person-related workplace bullying impacts playing dumb and evasive knowledge hiding both directly and indirectly. In addition to this, person-related bullying does not affect rationalized knowledge hiding. This study also found that RPCB mediates the relationship between person-related bullying and knowledge hiding dimensions.

This study offers important implications for IT firms, including software houses. The findings imply that organizations should discourage person-related workplace bullying to reduce employees’ intention to engage in knowledge-hiding behavior. Moreover, the management of these firms should develop a culture of interpersonal trust among employees so that they can care for the relational psychological contract.

This study is amongst the few types of research that has investigated the impact of person-related bullying on different forms of knowledge hiding behavior through the mediating role of RPCB.

This study aims to draw on social exchange theory and reciprocity norm to examine the direct effects and mechanisms through which developmental human resources (HR) practices influence employee knowledge hiding behaviors. Additionally, the authors investigate the mediating role of psychological collectivism and the moderating role of affective organizational commitment.

To test the research model, the authors employed a three-stage time-lagged study design and surveyed a sample of 302 employees in China. The authors utilized confirmatory factor analysis, hierarchical regression analysis and the bootstrapping method using statistical product and service solutions (SPSS) and analysis of moment structures (AMOS) to test the hypotheses.

The findings indicate the following: (1) Developmental HR practices are negatively associated with playing dumb and evasive hiding, but positively linked with rationalized hiding; (2) Psychological collectivism serves as a mediating factor in the relationship between developmental HR practices and knowledge hiding; (3) Affective organizational commitment not only moderates the relationship between developmental HR practices and psychological collectivism, but also reinforces the indirect impact of developmental HR practices on knowledge hiding.

This study offers a fresh perspective on previous research regarding the impact of developmental HR practices on employee behavior. Furthermore, it provides practical recommendations for organizations to enhance knowledge management by fostering stronger emotional connections between employees and the organization.

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships among knowledge attributes (complexity and implicitness), interpersonal distrust, knowledge hiding (KH) and team efficacy and second, to explore a new dimension of KH.

Data for this research were collected from more than 940 employees working in manufacturing, information technology (IT), finance and the purification industry. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypothesized relationships.

First, the research confirmed the existence of bullying hiding behaviors in the knowledge economy era based on “knowledge power.” Second, the findings suggest that knowledge attributes are an important predictor of KH behaviors in organizations. The findings implicate the mediating effect of interpersonal distrust and the moderating role of team efficacy, while team efficacy negatively moderated the relationships between interpersonal distrust with evasive hiding and playing dumb, but positively moderated the relationship between interpersonal distrust with rationalized hiding and bullying hiding.

This is the first study to propose bullying hiding, a behavior that has emerged in organizational knowledge transfer, and it is more detrimental to knowledge sharing than other KH behaviors. The results of research on the different regulating effects of team efficacy on KH behaviors enrich the boundary conditions of KH research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the longitudinal influence of gender, age, education level, organizational tenure and emotional intelligence on three dimensions of knowledge hiding over time.

A longitudinal study using two-wave data sets of 390 employees in Chinese enterprises was conducted to build fixed, continuous and interacting models for investigating the effects of individual differences on the processes of knowledge hiding over time.

This research uncovered the changing relationships of individual differences on knowledge-hiding behaviors over time, such that age correlates with rationalized hiding in the interacting model, indicating younger employees are less likely to choose rationalized hiding when facing situation changes; and education level, organizational tenure and emotional intelligence moderate knowledge hiding over time, implying individuals with better education, longer tenure and higher emotional intelligence tend to exhibit more rationalized hiding behaviors rather than evasive hiding and playing dumb behaviors at Time 2.

One of the novel contributions of this study is that it tests the longitudinal effect of individual differences on knowledge hiding, providing a vertical perspective, and thereby contributing to the body of knowledge in knowledge management. The study also constructs fixed, continuous and interacting models to measure the covering longitudinal influences, thus making the research original.

This research aims to investigate relationship between workplace spirituality and employees' knowledge-hiding as mediated by organizational identification.

In this research, a time-lagged design is employed and multi-source data are collected through self-administered questionnaires. A sample of 305 focal respondents and 1,048 of the respondents' peers is used to test the hypotheses using AMOS (analysis of moment structures) 24.0.

The results reveal that two dimensions of workplace spirituality – meaningful work and values alignment –play significant roles in reducing knowledge-hiding in terms of workplace spirituality's three dimensions of evasive hiding, rationalized hiding and “playing dumb.” However, contrary to expectations, a sense of community has significant positive effects on the dimensions of knowledge-hiding. The study also reveals that organizational identification significantly mediates the relationships between the dimensions of workplace spirituality and those of knowledge-hiding.

This pioneer study introduces workplace spirituality (which differs from religious spirituality) and the significance of workplace spirituality in the workplace in the religious and conservative society of Pakistan. This study uses the lens of social identity theory (SIT) to establish for the first-time organizational identity as a mediating mechanism between workplace spirituality and knowledge-hiding to offer new insights for theory and practice.

As knowledge hiding is prevalent and often leaves severe detrimental consequences in its wake, it is imperative to place strategies on the front burner to identify its potential antecedents forthwith if there is going to be any headway to curtail the incidence of this phenomenon in organizations. Therefore, this study aims to examine the relationship between dispositional greed and knowledge hiding with the perceived loss of knowledge power as an underlying mechanism.

A multi-wave, three weeks apart strategy was used for data collection. A sample of 262 employees working full-time in various organizations operating across different industries in Nigeria participated in this study. Data were analyzed with partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results showed that dispositional greed related positively to a perceived loss of knowledge power but insignificantly to any of the three dimensions of knowledge hiding (i.e. playing dumb, evasive hiding and rationalized hiding). On the other hand, the relationship between perceived loss of knowledge power and the three dimensions of knowledge hiding was positive. Finally, dispositional greed had an indirect positive relationship with the three dimensions of knowledge hiding through perceived loss of knowledge power.

All the variables were self-reported, which may lead to the same source bias.

Human resources managers can subject employees to cognitive restructuring training to help them identify thinking patterns that contribute to the perception of losing their power in the organization if they share knowledge and help reshape their perceptions regarding knowledge sharing. Management can use rewards to encourage employees to adopt knowledge sharing and refrain from knowledge hiding as a desired organizational norm.

This study offers novel insights that identify an underlying mechanism that encourages greedy employees to enact knowledge hiding.

The purpose of the study is to explore empirically the consequences of knowledge hiding at the individual level and from the knowledge hiding committers' perspective. Hence, in line with agency theory and prior literature on knowledge hiding, the study investigates the associations between different facets of knowledge hiding and individual-level job performance, as well as the mediating role of employee well-being in the associations.

Structural equation modeling was used to analyze multisource survey data from a sample of 214 employees and 34 immediate supervisors, in a professional services company in Finland.

Evasive hiding was found to be negatively associated with in-role job performance and positively associated with innovative job performance. Playing dumb was found to be positively associated with in-role job performance. Finally, even though the association between rationalized hiding and innovative job performance was found to be positive, it was found to be of a smaller magnitude when employee well-being was taken into account.

Forceful unhealthy competition and exploitative and workaholic cultures are discussed to reduce knowledge hiding behavior among employees and their negative consequences.

The study highlights the paradox of managing organizational knowledge. In line with agency theory, we advocate that while knowledge sharing is one of the major assets of organizational welfare from the organizational perspective, it may resonate with the employee's perspective. Consequently, unless employees' self-interest and organizational interests are aligned, the paradox of managing organizational knowledge arises, and the classic agency problem occurs.