The effect of exploitative leadership on knowledge hiding: a conservation of resources perspective

By Limin Guo, Ken Cheng, Jinlian Luo. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 2020

115 citations recorded by the source corpus.

PurposeDrawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to explore the influencing mechanism of exploitative leadership on knowledge hiding. Specifically, this study focuses on the mediating role of psychological distress and the moderating role of hostile attribution bias in affecting the mediation.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 324 employees of a high-technology company in China by a three-wave questionnaire survey. Hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrapping approach were employed to test hypotheses.FindingsThis study found that exploitative leadership was positively related to knowledge hiding and that psychological distress mediated this relationship. Moreover, the results revealed that the positive relationship between exploitative leadership and psychological distress and the indirect effect of exploitative leadership on knowledge hiding via psychological distress were stronger when hostile attribution was high rather than low.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study offer guidance for managers to better undermine the negative effects of exploitative leadership.Originality/valueFirst, this study extends the literature on exploitative leadership by verifying the positive effect of exploitative leadership on knowledge hiding. Second, this study enriches one’s understanding of the “black box” underlying the link between exploitative leadership and its consequences by demonstrating the mediating role of psychological distress. Third, by verifying the moderating role of hostile attribution bias, this study provides insights into the boundary conditions of the impact of exploitative leadership.

Subfields: Communication, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d5361dde06d6e40a4378e313db41a1fe909797c7