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A contemporary view of group communication must consider hidden groups, which are those collectives that intentionally conceal key aspects of their identity at various levels (e.g., group, member, organization) from relevant audiences. This chapter reviews several general research areas and findings related to hidden groups and then briefly examines some of the theories and methodological issues relevant to hidden groups. Building on that, a multilevel framework that also considers members and broader organizational structures is offered to help distinguish various types of hidden groups.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a better understanding of how hidden organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) manages the dialectical tension between concealment and revelation. Despite research on AA’s successes and failures across disciplines, scholars have not thoroughly uncovered how AA communicates internally and externally to maintain the desired level of the organizational visibility. AA’s visibility management is critical in terms of achieving the organizational goals of AA.

To capture how AA communicatively manages the visibility of the organization, the author attended and observed the World Meeting of AA. As a participant-observer, the author did ethnographic fieldwork at the World Meeting.

During the convention, various types of communication strategies AA used to maintain the dialectical tension of concealment/revelation as well as celebrate its international convention became apparent. In particular, AA responded the tension strategically by choosing segmentation, denial and education at the World Meeting.

The author’s observation was suitable to describe AA’s anonymous communication practices. Its empirical finding was valuable for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to address the issues raised by hidden conflicts in a charismatic-led organization. The paper investigates the transformation from a management paradigm of quelling conflict artificially through charismatic leadership to a paradigm of negotiation that favors participation, systematicity, the multiplying of innovation sources and synchronization. The research is based on a specific approach to action research aimed at revealing the inherently masked conflictive energy, and contributing to a more sustainable, peaceful and well-performing construct.

The framework is a specific approach to participatory action research that the authors call socio-economic intervention research.

The results of the research support the proposition that while charismatic leadership quells conflict and jeopardizes the sustainability of the organization, socio-economic intervention research can help transform conflicts into cooperation in this type of organization.

The main contributions relate to shedding light on the hazards of denying conflict in charismatic-led organizations, and the importance of systemic negotiation in transforming conflict into cooperation in the Middle Eastern cultural context.

This chapter discusses why employees keep their knowledge to themselves. Despite managers’ best efforts, many employees tend to hoard knowledge or are reluctant to share their expertise with coworkers or managers. Although many firms have introduced specialized initiatives to encourage a broader dissemination of ideas and knowledge among organizational members, these initiatives often fail. This chapter provides reasons as to why this is so. Instead of focusing on why individuals might share their knowledge, however, we explain why individuals keep their knowledge to themselves. Multiple perspectives are offered, including social exchange, norms of secrecy, and territorial behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to explore what female business owners hide to better understand social norms and discourses that influence the decisions women make about how they structure their home and work lives.

The author used qualitative interviews to access the narratives of female business owners in public relations within the USA. This industry segment attracts primarily women and, unlike a retail store, offers women a variety of ways to structure their business hours and locations.

Women use hiding as a way to manage others’ impressions and as a way to gain legitimacy for themselves and their organizations. Specifically, the findings fall into three categories: hiding childcare obligations, obscuring their work locations and “fake it until you make it”. Hiding is used a strategy to deal with tensions that arise based on women’s interpretations of social norms and discourses.

Based on the finite nature of any study, it is difficult to assess the long-term impact of hiding. Further, as with many studies, the geographic location, gender and industry segment provide a context for this research, which means the reader must determine the transferability.

Few studies explore hiding as a means to gain access to gendered discourses that can undermine identity construction and business growth. By uncovering what female business owners hide, it provides opportunities for self-awareness and agency.

Why and when people working in organisations hide their knowledge has received considerable academic attention. However, little attention has been paid to knowledge hiding in academia itself, even though universities are known as places where knowledge is shared. This study aims to consider the dilemma faced by academics when undertaking research work: should they share or hide what they are doing?

Using empirical evidence drawn from 20 academics in a number of UK Business Schools, the authors carried out in-depth interviews to investigate the effects of strategic knowledge hiding (SKH) on research knowledge work. The authors argue that SKH can drive competitive individuals to establish research superiority.

The findings revealed that most respondents have, for strategic reasons, hidden their tacit and/or explicit knowledge from others during ongoing research processes, but have, at the same time, purposefully sought for knowledge from targeted colleagues.

The findings extend the previous literature by revealing not only the distinctive individual antecedents of SKH but also its positive outcomes. The findings illustrate a pioneering contribution of a systematic model of SKH among university business school academics.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between intra-organizational knowledge hiding (I-OKH) and turnover intention via the mediating role of organizational embeddedness.

A model was developed and tested with data collected from 276 knowledge workers from the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) using Smart PLS3 to test the hypotheses.

Results show that organizational embeddedness mediates the relationship between intra-organizational knowledge hiding and turnover intention because intra-organizational knowledge hiding relates negatively to organizational embeddedness, which, in turn, has a negative effect on turnover intentions.

This study can be beneficial for organizations that employ knowledge workers. The management should pay attention to the existence and consequences of intra-organizational knowledge hiding to control one of the causing factors of weakened organizational embeddedness, which, in turn, increases employee turnover intentions.

This study is the first attempt to analyze knowledge hiding from a third-person point of view. Moreover, this is the first to examine the mediating role of organizational embeddedness in the relationship between intra-organizational knowledge hiding and employee turnover intentions, enriched by employing the data from the knowledge workers beyond the Anglo-American-European world.

Numerous studies have linked the role of knowledge sharing with project success, while limited attention has been given to the consequences of knowledge hiding. The unwillingness of leaders to share information may cause the failure of assigned tasks, thus affecting the success of any project. Withholding information by leaders can potentially result in incomplete ideas, thus causing poor innovative work behaviour (IWB) among employees. Despite such knowledge-hiding behaviour, most employees continue working positively towards IWB.

In order to test these proposed hypotheses, data were collected from active information technology (IT) projects using purposive sampling technique. The purposive sampling method was selected to specifically focus on projects that require innovation. A total of 324 responses were considered for final analyses, which were collected in time lag.

The study outcomes amplified the important issue of knowledge-hiding behaviour among leaders that adversely affected the IT project industry and how such behaviour led to failure as a result of poor IWB. Apparently, IWB intervened between knowledge-hiding behaviour among leaders and project success. However, high curiosity among employees seemed to reduce the negative effects of knowledge-hiding behaviour among leaders.

This study substantially adds to the leadership literature and holds immense importance for project professionals by drawing their attention to the neglected area causing project failure.

The concept of knowledge-hiding starkly contradicts the notions with which it is closely associated, such as knowledge-hoarding and knowledge-sharing. The understanding of the effect of humble leadership on follower knowledge-hiding behaviour is particularly limited, as it is significantly underdeveloped owing to its distinct nature. Ergo, this paper aims to explore the role of humble leadership and its ability to mitigate employee knowledge-hiding behaviour. Moreover, this study aims to investigate the mediating effect of employee self-efficacy and the trust that they have in their leader, based on the relationship between humble leadership behaviour and knowledge-hiding in Jordanian health-care organisations.

This study used a quantitative method, and 260 employees of Jordan’s health-care organisations completed an online self-report questionnaire. Further to this, structural equation modelling was used to test the hypothesised correlations.

According to the findings of this study, the leaders who exhibited humble behaviour mitigated their employees’ tendencies to engage in the two dimensions of knowledge-hiding (evasive hiding and playing dumb); however, they increased the tendency to practice rationalised hiding. Furthermore, the self-efficacy of employees and trust in their leader mediated the relationship between humble leadership and employees’ knowledge-hiding behaviour.

This study contributes to the literature by proposing and empirically demonstrating the impact of humble leadership across all three dimensions of knowledge-hiding behaviour, which in turn facilitates new discoveries in a developing country setting. This research expands and sheds light on the theory of humble leadership by proposing a motivational aspect in the negative relation between humble leadership and employees’ knowledge-hiding behaviour: employees’ self-efficacy and trust in their leader.