Purpose Creativity and innovation are crucial in improving the organizational performance and sustaining competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between knowledge hiding and team creativity. Design/methodology/approach The authors tested the hypotheses with a sample of 87 knowledge worker teams involving 393 employees and employers in China. Findings Knowledge hiding is negatively related to team creativity, fully mediated by absorptive capacity. In addition, the negative relationship between knowledge hiding and absorptive capacity would be weakened by task interdependence. Practical implications Team managers should take measures to avoid the development of knowledge hiding, which is indirectly related to team creativity via absorptive capacity within a team, and motivate team members to share more knowledge by training to improve their feelings of accountability, responsibility, and duty. In addition, managers can decrease knowledge hiding by strengthening within-team task interdependence. Originality/value This study is one of the first to investigate the relationship between knowledge hiding and team creativity and the moderating role of task interdependence in the relationship between knowledge hiding and absorptive capacity.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine why employees hide knowledge and how organizations intervene and influence the negative effects of knowledge hiding. This study builds and tests a theoretical model at both individual and team level. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from universities, research institutes and enterprises’ research and development (R&D) teams in China via a two-wave survey. The final sample contained 417 cases. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to test hypotheses. Findings The results show that territoriality plays a mediating role between psychological ownership and knowledge hiding, and that organizational result justice negatively moderated the relationship between territoriality and knowledge hiding. Procedure justice negatively moderated the relationship between territoriality and rationalized hiding, and that between territoriality and evasive hiding. Interactive justice negatively moderated the relationship between territoriality and rationalized hiding, and that between territoriality and evasive hiding. There were thus interactive effects among territoriality, perceived knowledge value and psychological ownership; the relationship between individual psychological ownership and territoriality was weaker when perceived knowledge value was lower and task interdependence was higher, and stronger with higher perceived knowledge value and lower task interdependence. Research limitations/implications Territorial behaviors, such as knowledge hoarding and misleading within R&D teams, are the primary challenges for organizations’ positive activities, including internal sharing, teamwork and organizational goal accomplishment. Researching knowledge territoriality in the Chinese cultural context will help to distinguish territorial behaviors and to take preventive measures. In addition, this study not only enables managers to understand clearly the precipitating factors of knowledge territoriality and the relationships among them but also provides constructive strategies for reducing the negative effect of organizational intervention in knowledge territoriality. Originality/value This study adopts a multilevel modeling method and not only reveals the “black box” of interaction among psychological ownership, territoriality and knowledge hiding at the individual level but also probes the three-way interaction of perceived knowledge value, team task dependency and psychological ownership with territoriality at both individual and team levels, and then discusses the mediation effect of organizational justice on the relationship between territoriality and knowledge hiding. The conclusion of this study not only enriches the literature on knowledge hiding in the field of knowledge management but also helps to elucidate the function and intervention mechanism of knowledge hiding.

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Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the potential process through which leadership exerts impacts on organizational innovation. A thorough analysis was conducted by highlighting the contribution of ambidextrous leadership to organizational innovation. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from companies located in mainland China. A total of 200 cases were included in the final sample. Hierarchical regression analysis was adopted to test the hypotheses in this study. Findings The results showed that exploitation knowledge search and exploration knowledge search partly mediated the relationship between ambidextrous leadership and organizational innovation, respectively. Strategic flexibility could positively moderate the relationship between exploitation knowledge search and organizational innovation and had no significant impacts on moderating the relationship between exploration knowledge search and organizational innovation. Research limitations/implications In this study, not only were managers provided with a sophisticated understanding of how and when ambidextrous leadership could influence organizational innovation but also concrete strategies were given for enhancing organizational innovation. Originality/value In this study, the interaction among ambidextrous leadership, knowledge search and organizational innovation were elucidated and the moderating impacts of strategic flexibility on the relationship between knowledge search and organizational innovation were explored. The findings of this study enriched the literature on leadership, knowledge management and innovation.

Radical innovation is a fundamental approach to achieving sustainable and competitive advantage. However, existing studies have not adequately explored the antecedents of radical innovation; in particular, consideration of leadership factors in a Chinese context is lacking. Ambidextrous leadership provides a new perspective for explaining radical innovation. In this study, we developed a moderation model and tested it with three-wave data of 511 employees from the Chinese mainland, linking ambidextrous leadership with radical innovative capability. The results support our hypotheses that high-empowering-low-directive leadership (punctuated ambidextrous leadership) is more beneficial for radical innovation, and strong leader support can strengthen this effect. However, our hypothesis that simultaneous ambidextrous leadership influences positively radical innovation capability was not supported. These findings indicate that leaders should change their original conservative and directive strategies to enhance radical innovative capability.