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When and How Knowledge Hiding Motivates Perpetrators' Organizational Citizenship Behavior

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Abstract

Research on knowledge hiding has largely focused on its antecedents while overlooking its consequences. Drawing on moral cleansing theory, we adopt a “perpetrator-centric view” and posit that employees who engage in playing dumb and evasive hiding–two specific knowledge hiding behaviors that involve deception–will subsequently perform more organizational citizenship behavior directed toward individuals (OCB-I) because they perceive a loss of moral credits following their moral transgression. Further, we propose that the indirect effects are contingent on perpetrators’ moral identity internalization. We tested our hypotheses using a time-lagged research design with a sample of 362 respondents from a large pharmaceutical group company. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that employees who engaged in playing dumb and evasive hiding subsequently exhibited more OCB-I as they perceived a loss of moral credits, whereas employees who engaged in rationalized hiding did not. In addition, the positive relationships between playing dumb and evasive hiding with perceived loss of moral credits were stronger when perpetrators had high moral identity internalization, as were the indirect effects of playing dumb and evasive hiding on OCB-I via perceived loss of moral credits. Our research contributes to the understanding of when and how engaging in knowledge hiding affects perpetrators and their compensatory behaviors toward coworkers.

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Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 71901080, 72074059, 72371005), the Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province (Grant Number LH2021G004), and the Social Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province (Grant Number 21GLC183).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, Harbin Engineering University, 145 Nantong Street, Harbin, 150001, Heilongjiang, China

    Wei Pan & Yi Su

  2. Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology, 800 West Peachtree St. NW, Atlanta, GA, 30308, USA

    Egan Lua

  3. College of Economics and Management, Beijing University of Technology, 100 Pingleyuan, Chaoyang, Beijing, 100124, China

    Zaoli Yang

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  1. Wei Pan
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Correspondence to Yi Su.

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Appendix

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See Figures 4, 5, 6, 7.

Fig. 4
figure 4

Results of serial mediation model with playing dumb as independent variable. Note: N = 362. ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. Bootstrapping sample size = 5000. SE standard error, CI confidence interval. Numbers shown are unstandardized estimates. Control variables include gender, age, education, organizational tenure, and organizational position. Control variables were not shown for parsimony purposes

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Fig. 5
figure 5

Results of serial mediation model with evasive hiding as independent variable. Note: N = 362. ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. Bootstrapping sample size = 5000. SE standard error, CI confidence interval. Numbers shown are unstandardized estimates. Control variables include gender, age, education, organizational tenure, and organizational position. Control variables were not shown for parsimony purposes

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Fig. 6
figure 6

Results of moderated serial mediation model with playing dumb as independent variable. Note: N = 362. * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. Bootstrapping sample size = 5000. SE standard error, CI confidence interval. Numbers shown are unstandardized estimates. Numbers shown in square brackets are coefficients for the interaction terms. Control variables include gender, age, education, organizational tenure, and organizational position. Control variables and the direct effects of moral identity internalization were not shown for parsimony purposes

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Fig. 7
figure 7

Results of moderated serial mediation model with evasive hiding as independent variable. Note: N = 362. ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001. Bootstrapping sample size = 5000. SE standard error, CI confidence interval. Numbers shown are unstandardized estimates. Numbers shown in square brackets are coefficients for the interaction terms. Control variables include gender, age, education, organizational tenure, and organizational position. Control variables and the direct effects of moral identity internalization were not shown for parsimony purposes

Full size image

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Pan, W., Lua, E., Yang, Z. et al. When and How Knowledge Hiding Motivates Perpetrators' Organizational Citizenship Behavior. J Bus Ethics (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05567-x

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