Defending the frontier: examining the impact of internal salesperson evasive knowledge hiding on perceptions of external customer outcomes

Abstract

Purpose Salespeople frequently face the predicament of wanting to protect their market knowledge from coworkers while not appearing recalcitrant. Considering the choice of disclosing information or refusing to disclose, they may choose a third option: appearing to share knowledge while concealing substantive information, which this study calls evasive knowledge hiding. This study surmises that the consequences of these choices impact perceptions of customer outcomes. Using social exchange theory, the purpose of this article is to examine the internal relational antecedents and perceptions of external customer outcomes of evasive knowledge hiding, as well as the moderating effects of pushover manager and environmental dynamism. Design/methodology/approach A moderated mediation model was used to analyze survey data from 234 business-to-business salespeople. Findings Internal competition and coworkers’ past opportunistic behavior increase evasive knowledge hiding. These effects are attenuated if the manager is not a pushover. Evasive knowledge hiding decreases perceptions of external customer outcomes, particularly at low levels of environmental dynamism. Research limitations/implications Data was collected from salespeople, which presents a look from perpetrators themselves. While directly observing salespeople was the goal, sourcing and matching customer and manager data would only strengthen the results. Practical implications Salespeople evasively hide their knowledge if it is in their best interest, which may unwittingly hurt perceptions of customer outcomes. Originality/value This study formally introduces salesperson evasive knowledge hiding into the marketing and sales literature. The research highlights the dark side of social exchange theory by demonstrating how internal coworker relationships affect perceptions of external customer relationships via evasive knowledge hiding. This study also introduces pushover manager as an enabling moderating variable.

Abusive supervision and knowledge hiding in service organizations: exploring the boundary conditions

“…Finally, it is important for employees in service organizations to establish an interpersonal relationship with customers (Chaker et al , 2020). The researchers predict that abused employees hide requested knowledge from the coworkers and manifest hiding behaviors directed to the customers.…”

The Psychology behind Knowledge Hiding in an Organization

“…Studies have found that KH is not only a hindrance to knowledge sharing (Qureshi and Evans 2015;Liu et al 2020a) but is also detrimental to organizations, as it can affect a firm's decision-making quality (Ghasemaghaei and Turel 2021), idea implementation (Li et al 2020), organizational performance, team performance (Chatterjee et al 2021), and creativity (Bogilovic et al 2017;Fong et al 2018;Peng et al 2019), in addition to employees' turnover intention (Serenko and Bontis 2016) and organizational citizenship behaviors (Arain et al 2020). KH also affects the internal and external stakeholders in an organization by affecting, for example, employees' abilities to solve customer problems, relationship building with customers (Chaker et al 2020), creativity (Rhee and Choi 2017), and job (Chatterjee et al 2021;Wang et al 2018b;Jahanzeb et al 2020) and innovation performance (Khoreva and Wechtler 2020). More research on KH is required to achieve a successful promotion of knowledge transfer within organizations (Wang et al 2018a).…”

How Peer Abusive Supervision Affects Sales Employees’ Customer Knowledge Hiding: The Roles of Rivalry and Schadenfreude

“…[2][3][4][5] A significant source of customer knowledge is sales employees, who can engage with and develop close relationships with customers to obtain and share knowledge about customers within firms. 6 For sales employees, sales performance often depends on their ability to acquire customer knowledge (eg, customer preferences) from peers and share some customer knowledge without jeopardizing their competitive advantage. 6 While they appear to be sharing knowledge with peers, sales employees may intentionally skip the valuable or critical information and only include outdated information to others; this is known as sales employee knowledge hiding.…”

“…6 For sales employees, sales performance often depends on their ability to acquire customer knowledge (eg, customer preferences) from peers and share some customer knowledge without jeopardizing their competitive advantage. 6 While they appear to be sharing knowledge with peers, sales employees may intentionally skip the valuable or critical information and only include outdated information to others; this is known as sales employee knowledge hiding. 7 Firms have developed measures (eg, rewards and organizational culture) to encourage knowledge sharing among employees, and knowledge hiding remains prevalent in many firms.…”

“…7 Firms have developed measures (eg, rewards and organizational culture) to encourage knowledge sharing among employees, and knowledge hiding remains prevalent in many firms. 6,[8][9][10] Such reluctance to share knowledge (ie, knowledge hiding) can cost Fortune 500 companies over $31.5bn annually due to general knowledge hiding behaviors. 11 However, sales employees may only consider hiding customer knowledge as a measure to protect resources and competitive advantage at work, rather than harmful conduct.…”