Perceived organizational politics, knowledge hiding and diminished promotability: how do harmony motives matter?

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to investigate an underexplored behavioral factor, knowledge hiding, that connects employees’ perceptions of organizational politics (POP) with their diminished promotability, while also considering the moderating role of employees’ harmony motives in this process. Design/methodology/approach The research hypotheses are tested with multisource, three-round data collected among employees and their supervisors. Findings Employees’ beliefs about self-serving organizational decision-making increase their propensity to hide knowledge, which, in turn, diminishes their promotability. This intermediate role of knowledge hiding is more prominent when their disintegration avoidance motive is strong but less prominent when their harmony enhancement motive is strong. Practical implications A refusal to share knowledge with organizational colleagues, as a covert response to POP, can create a negative cycle for employees. They are frustrated with decision-making practices that are predicated on favoritism, but by choosing seemingly subtle ways to respond, they compromise their own promotion prospects. To avoid this escalation, employees should adopt an active instead of passive approach toward maintaining harmony in their work relationships. Originality/value This research contributes to extant research by detailing a hitherto overlooked reason that employees’ frustrations with dysfunctional politics may escalate into an enhanced probability to miss out on promotion opportunities. They respond to this situation by engaging in knowledge hiding. As an additional contribution, this study details how the likelihood of this response depends on employees’ harmony motives.

Does perceived overqualification lead employees to further knowledge hiding? The role of relative deprivation and ego depletion

“…The representative item is “Pretended that I did not know the information.” KH scale has three components: evasive hiding, playing dumb and rationalized hiding, but much research has used it as a single measure (De Clercq et al , 2022; Ma and Zhang, 2022). In particular, De Clercq et al (2022) have recently conducted CFA on the KH scale and found that these three dimensions have congregated into a component at the second-order construct. Following De Clercq et al ’s (2022) study, we used an aggregated KH scale pertinent to the second-order construct.…”

“…RD scale (Time 1): To measure RD, the eight-item scale based on the preconditions of RD as developed by Buunk et al (2003) Control variables: Previous studies have documented that demographic variables such as age, gender and education were associated with the KH (Akhtar et al, 2022;De Clercq et al, 2022). Thus, these variables were controlled in our study.…”

“…In particular, De Clercq et al (2022) have recently conducted CFA on the KH scale and found that these three dimensions have congregated into a component at the second-order construct. Following De Clercq et al ’s (2022) study, we used an aggregated KH scale pertinent to the second-order construct.…”

“…Control variables : Previous studies have documented that demographic variables such as age, gender and education were associated with the KH (Akhtar et al , 2022; De Clercq et al , 2022). Thus, these variables were controlled in our study.…”

Pandemic crisis and employee skills: how emotion regulation and improvisation limit the damaging effects of perceived pandemic threats on job performance

“…Table 2 reports the mediation findings, and Tables 3 and 4 provide the moderated mediation findings, generated with the Process macro. In line with previous research and recommendations (De Clercq, Sofyan, Shang, & Espinal Romani, 2021;Hayes & Rockwood, 2020), we report the R 2 and F-values for each of the estimated models. The F-values are all strongly significant ( p < .001), which indicates that the model predictions are meaningful.…”