A Research On The Effect Of Leader's Knowledge Hiding On Employee's Innovative Work Behaviors And Silence

With the development of the knowledge-based economy,knowledge has been widely recognized as one of the critical strategic resources for organizations.The organization's success depends on its capability to leverage intellectual capital.Given that most of the internal knowledge is embedded in the individual employee,organizations do not truly own these intangible assets.Therefore,knowledge sharing as a process that can accelerate knowledge transformation and in turn can facilitate value creation becomes the core of knowledge management for organizations.Although organizations can reap a wide range of benefits from knowledge sharing,it does not mean knowledge sharing is attractive to each individual.For example,knowledge sharing not only leads to the depletion of individual knowledge power but also demands knowledge owner's time and energy to fulfill the successful transfer.Thus,individuals sometimes hesitate to engage in knowledge sharing even when knowledge is requested by coworkers.The failed knowledge sharing causes an average of $31.5 billion of financial loss each year for Fortune 500 firms.The reason for their failed knowledge sharing is not only a lack of knowledge but also intentional knowledge hiding.Previous studies indicate that knowledge hiding can result in a variety of negative outcomes within organizations such as declining individual creativity,damaging interpersonal relationships,decreasing group learning capability and firm performance.Knowledge hiding,defined as “an intentional attempt by an individual to withhold or conceal knowledge that has been requested by another person”,has become a pervasive workplace phenomenon around the world(Connelly et al.,2012,p.65),while it was only distinguished from knowledge sharing as an independent construct in recent decade.Knowledge hiding is a nascent concept especially in the field of organizational behavior and human resource management.The extant literature mainly focuses on the knowledge hiding among peers,whereas less pay attention to the knowledge hiding among supervisor-subordinator dyadic relationships in the vertical direction.Some researchers highlighted that leaders are possible to hide their knowledge from subordinators for some reason such as consolidating authority,avoiding being exploited,and motivating subordinators.Connelly and Zweig(2015)call for more attention to the leader's knowledge hiding and their intentions.This study focuses on the leader's knowledge hiding and its consequences,responding to Connelly and Zweig's call.Although there have been few papers on the consequences of leader-related knowledge hiding,none of the existing studies explores the effects of perceived leader's knowledge hiding on the knowledge-seeking employee's innovative work behavior and silence in the Chinese context.Additionally,the majority of present literature has identified knowledge hiding as a general concept rather than distinguish types of knowledge hiding and its corresponding influences.The specific discussion of different types of knowledge hiding may shed light on the underlying mechanism of the positive outcomes of knowledge hiding.This study explored two types of leader's knowledge hiding(i.e.,implicit hiding and rationalized hiding).Specifically,implicit hiding refers to those deceptive and indirect responses to knowledge seeker's requests,while rationalized hiding involves those explicit and directly justifying responses to other's knowledge requests.Based on the comprehensive literature review,this study made an initial exploration of the leader's knowledge hiding and subordinator-attributed hiding intentions by small-sized semi-structural interviews.These interviews aim to bridge the academic and practical knowledge of the leader's knowledge hiding in the Chinese workplace and to make a solid foundation for the following empirical study.According to Hinkin's(1998)guidance to the scale development,this study develops the subordinator-attributed leader's knowledge hiding intention scale.We collected the statements of the leader's knowledge hiding intentions from MBA students in a university located in middle China.After the screening of the initial items,we protested the initial scale by the data collected from MBA alumni in the same university and then tested the revised scale with data from an online survey.Finally,this study achieved three subscales describing the subordinator-attributed hiding intentions,that is,cultivation intention,guanxi intention,and power intention.Drawing from leader-member exchange(LMX)theory and attribution theory,this study attempts to explore the underlying mechanism in the link of leader's knowledge hiding and employee's work behaviors(i.e.,innovative work behavior and silence).The moderated mediation model was built to test the research hypotheses.This study employed a two-wave survey to collect data.A total of 268 employees from an online panel of Chinese-speaking adults(www.sojump.com)completed our questionnaires.Then the structural model approach was used to test hypotheses by Mplus 7.4.This study uncovers the “black box” of the consequences of the leader's knowledge hiding.The findings indicate that the leader's implicit hiding negatively relates with subordinator-rated LMX quality,while rationalized hiding positively relates with subordinator-rated LMX quality,which is in line with the Connelly and Zweig's(2015)findings that rationalized hiding improves interpersonal relationships.Additionally,subordinator's perceptions of LMX quality mediates the association between the type of leader's knowledge hiding and employee's work behaviors.Although rationalized leader's hiding can motivate the positive employee's work behavior by its effect on LMX quality,whereas the same hiding behavior may directly increase employee's silence due to the leader's role model effect.This finding warns practitioners to be cautious of the positive influence of the leader's knowledge hiding on employee's work behaviors.In terms of the moderating effects of subordinate-attributed hiding intention,this study specifically examined the subordinate-attributed cultivation intention as the moderator.With the purpose of this study,we expect to answer when and how leader's knowledge hiding leads to less negative outcomes.Among the three types of attributed intentions,guanxi and power intention are both self-serving and instrumental in nature,while cultivation intention is altruistic in nature and is closely related to subordinator's interests.This study assumes that cultivation intention provides the contingent condition for less negative or more positive consequences.The findings support that subordinator-attributed cultivation intention moderates the relation between implicit leader's knowledge hiding and LMX quality,such that,the negative relation is weaker when subordinator-attributed cultivation intention is higher.Additionally,the indirect relation(via LMX quality)between implicit leader's knowledge hiding and innovative work behavior becomes weaker when subordinator-attributed cultivation intention is higher.The indirect relation(via LMX quality)of the implicit leader's knowledge hiding and silence becomes weaker when subordinator-attributed cultivation intention is higher.However,the results do not support the moderating effects of subordinator-attributed cultivation intention on the relation between rationalized knowledge hiding and LMX quality,innovative work behavior and silence.This study contributes to the extant literature in several ways.First,this is an empirical study of whether leader's knowledge hiding exerts a positive impact on employee's innovative work behavior and exerts an inhibiting effect on silence in the Chinese context.An exploration of these effects of leader's knowledge hiding is likely to extend the current understanding of knowledge hiding and undesirable leader's behaviors.Second,this study differentiates the type of knowledge hiding and tests its corresponding consequences via LMX quality.Although some scholars highlighted that knowledge hiding is not necessarily harmful,the empirical evidence has always been scarce.Third,this study initially draws on the attribution theory to explore the boundary conditions of the effects of the leader's knowledge hiding on employee's innovative work behavior and silence.The findings partially support the contingent role played by the subordinator-attributed leader's knowledge hiding intentions.This study contributes to knowledge hiding,leadership and human resource management literature.