An Empirical Study Of Knowledge Workers' Perceived Knowledge Ownership On Knowledge Hiding

Why have organizations spent a lot of resources and adopted various means,while the effect of knowledge sharing is still not ideal,and organizational members are reluctant to share knowledge.Why do employees choose to hide knowledge that has been requested by other colleagues? These problems have always been the common concerns of scholars and managers.Based on the theory of Psychological Ownership Theory,this paper studies the mechanism of the relationship between perceived ownership of knowledge and knowledge hiding.In other words,whether the individual considers that knowledge belongs to himself/herself or believes that knowledge belongs to the organization and himself/herself may have different effects on knowledge transfer behaviors.With the rise of knowledge-based payment economy recent years,expertise knowledge with unique values can bring knowledge power to individuals(including economic value,social value,and monopoly value in politics).Knowledge transfer is essentially the transfer of knowledge power.Therefore,from the perspective of knowledge power,this paper constructs the theoretical model in perceived ownership of knowledge,loss of knowledge power and knowledge hiding,attempting to reveal how perceived ownership of knowledge affects knowledge hiding.At the same time,the study also explores the effect which emotional intelligence has on knowledge hiding.This study takes organizational members from high-tech enterprises in Beijing,Shenzhen,and Xi'an as samples,collecting 573 valid samples for empirical testing in the end.The research result shows that perceived personal ownership of knowledge has a positive effect on knowledge hiding while loss of knowledge power has mediating effect on perceived personal ownership and knowledge hiding.It also suggests that employees with higher emotional intelligence are less intended to have knowledge hiding behaviors.It is contrary to common sense that perceived organizational ownership also has a positive effect on knowledge hiding.The conclusions of this paper expand the theory on the field of knowledge hiding and provide a new perspective for managing knowledge hiding in organizations.