Why and when knowledge hiding in the workplace is harmful: a review of the literature and directions for future research in the Chinese context

By Mengtian Xiao, Fang Lee Cooke. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 2018

201 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Knowledge hiding as an organisational phenomenon has started to attract research attention only in the last decade or so, although it may be a common behaviour in the workplace. Emerging research findings suggest that knowledge hiding is not necessarily a negative act with detrimental outcomes. Why do employees hide their knowledge? What can organisations do to encourage knowledge sharing in the workplace? Drawing on 52 studies published in academic English and Chinese journals over the period of 1997–2017, this study conducts a systematic review on knowledge hiding to clarify the concept, analyse existing research findings, identify research gaps and shed light on future research direction theoretically and empirically. The study has practical implications for organisations in terms of what human resource management interventions may be adopted to minimise undesirable knowledge hiding behaviours and to build trust among employees and enhance organisational effectiveness.

Subfields: Accounting, Communication, Demography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e752a41a64399e45e3592fb42b570601cd902547

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Accounting

1. Husam Rjoub
2. A. Alnaimi

In Communication

1. Husam Rjoub
2. A. Alnaimi
3. Veronica Scuotto

In Demography

1. Husam Rjoub
2. A. Alnaimi

Citations in the corpus

• Perceived organizational support, psychological entitlement, and extra-role behavior: The mediating role of knowledge hiding behavior (2019, methodology): “…age, gender, income, education, and work experience while testing the proposed hypotheses, because they were associated with knowledge hiding and extra-role behavior in prior research (e.g., Connelly et al., 2012; Černe et al., 2014; Černe, Hernaus, Dysvik, & Škerlavaj, 2017; Xiao & Cooke, 2018).”
• The social-psychological approach in understanding knowledge hiding within international R&D teams: An inductive analysis (2019, background): “However, the boundary conditions of eliciting the positive impact of knowledge hiding remains unclear (Xiao and Cooke, 2018).”