I cannot be creative due to my exploitative leader! A moderated mediation interplay of leader–member exchange quality and knowledge hiding

Abstract

PurposeWith an emphasis on displaced aggression theory and social exchange theory, this study aims to investigate the harmful effects of exploitative leadership (EL) on employee creativity (EC) through the mediating role of knowledge hiding (KH). Moreover, this study examines the boundary effects of leader–member exchange (LMX) to explore conditions under which KH is more or less likely to occur.Design/methodology/approachThe study employed time-lagged (i.e. three-wave), multisource (i.e. self-rated and peer-rated) research design to collect data from employees working in Pakistani service sector organizations. The study analyzed 323 responses using SMART PLS (v 3.3.3) to assess the measurement model and the structural model.FindingsThe findings reveal that EL is positively related to KH and negatively related to EC. The results also show partial mediating role of KH in the indirect relationship between EL and EC. Besides, the study also found that LMX moderates the positive relationship between EL and KH, and the negative relationship between EL and EC.Practical implicationsThe study divulges interesting findings that subordinates at high-quality LMX relationships (i.e. in-group members) are more susceptible to the harmful effects of supervisory unjust treatment than at low-quality LMX relationships (i.e. out-group members). Thus, occurrence context of KH, i.e. EL should be minimized through appropriate organizational interventions.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the leadership and knowledge management literature by testing a hitherto unexplored moderated mediation model.

Antecedents and consequences of knowledge sabotage in the Turkish telecommunication and retail sectors

“…As this study showed, the frustration-aggression-displacement theory offers a useful lens of analysis to explore the impact of interactional justice on counterproductive knowledge behavior. In a similar vein, Feng et al (2022) and Pradhan et al (2020) confirm that exploitative and abusive leaders make individual employees displace their aggression onto neutral targets (i.e. their co-workers) and hide knowledge from them.…”

How Green Mindfulness and Green Shared Vision Interact to Influence Green Creative Behavior

“…Additionally, the study calculated the “goodness-of-fit index” (GFI) – “the geometric mean of the average communality and average R 2 ”, using the diagnostic tool. 65 , 66 With a value of 0.547 higher than the threshold value of 0.36 for a significant effect size of R 2 , the GFI results are displayed in Table 5 , indicating a good model fit. 79 In addition, Stone-Geisser’s Q 2 was evaluated with an “omission distance” of 5.…”

Is it fair? How and when exploitative leadership impacts employees' knowledge sharing

“…As shown in Table 1, only one study was found to investigate the impact of exploitative leadership on knowledge sharing by considering the moderating role of organizational citizenship (Abdulmuhsin et al ., 2021), but how exploitative leadership impacts knowledge sharing is unknown. Though some studies have explored the relationship between exploitative leadership and knowledge hiding (Guo et al ., 2020; Syed et al ., 2021; Feng et al ., 2022), only one of them investigated the mediating role of psychological distress in such a relationship (Guo et al ., 2020). Other possible psychological mechanisms (e.g.…”

“…organization-based self-esteem) have not been examined. To weaken the positive impact of exploitative leadership on knowledge hiding, these three studies have examined different boundary conditions, such as hostile attribution bias (Guo et al ., 2020), fear of negative evaluation (Syed et al ., 2021) and leader-member exchange (Feng et al ., 2022). However, the role of other important organizational factors (e.g.…”