The social-psychological approach in understanding knowledge hiding within international R&D teams: An inductive analysis

Abstract

Knowledge hiding is widely considered a counter-productive workplace behavior that can hinder the employees' creativity and have a negative impact on performance. Although companies are prone to encourage knowledge sharing practices, employees are inclined to hide their knowledgetacit and explicit. Often this happens in research and development (R&D) process where team members may distrust each other or intentionally are not hostile in sharing knowledge. The phenomenon of knowledge hiding has increased the interest in researchers who have explored it in different views, there has been little research into the antecedents of knowledge hiding and the social factors that trigger the relate behavior. In this vein, the current study seeks to analyze antecedents and social factors through the lens of the theory of planned behavior as the guiding theory in an in-depth qualitative research. Specifically, knowledge hiders' attitudes, subjective norms and their perceived behavioral control over the knowledge hiding along with the cultural dimensions of 15 international R&D teams are investigated. Although exploratory, the study reveals the fact that cultivating an environment of collaboration and knowledge sharing is beneficial as it removes the organizational foundation of knowledge hiding, which is more likely to result in increased innovation within the whole organization. A comprehensive theoretical framework of knowledge hiding is proposed, and its implications on theory and practice are discussed with the aim of nudging further explorations on the topic.

Relational climates moderate the effect of openness to experience on knowledge hiding: a two-country multi-level study

“…Second, our study aims to further expand the understanding of how contextual influences (specifically, relational climates) interact with personality characteristics (especially openness to experience) to affect knowledge hiding (Lewin, 1951;Pervin, 1989;Tett & Burnett, 2003;Xiong et al, 2019). This second aim answers to the call for further multi-level approaches in studying knowledge hiding (e.g., Serenko & Bontis, 2016), where an interaction exists between personality and climate (Wang & Noe, 2010).…”

“…Doing so will also allow us to explore how various relational climates can activate behavior in traits that might result in knowledge hiding (cf. Xiong et al, 2019).…”

“…Investigating how organizational climate interacts with personality to activate individuals' traits and affect their behaviors could provide important insights into how knowledge hiding works. Specifically, we link the dyadic relational characteristic of knowledge hiding with an organizational climate that emphasizes relationships at work (Xiong, Chang, Scuotto, Shi, & Paoloni, 2019). A fundamental framework underlying human relational dynamics is Relational Model Theory, first proposed by Fiske (1992).…”

Understanding knowledge hiding in organizations

“…For example, task interdependence in teams has been shown to mitigate the negative association between knowledge hiding and team creativity (Fong, Men, Luo, & Jia, ), and job‐based psychological ownership has been suggested to predict knowledge hiding, in the presence of high avoidance motivation (Wang, Law, Zhang, Li, & Liang, ). There is evidence that prosocial motivation and cultural values interact to predict knowledge hiding (Babič, Černe, Škerlavaj, & Zhang, ), and knowledge hiding may be affected by subjective norms regarding collaboration (Xiong, Chang, Scuotto, Shi, & Paoloni, in press). Interestingly, knowledge hiding appears to have stronger negative effects (i.e., on creativity) for those with high social status within an organization (Rhee & Choi, ).…”

Peace engineering: The contribution of blockchain systems to the e-voting process

“…Based on previous experiences, participants claim that, for successful implementation, developers, governments, and institutions developing and using blockchain technology for election purposes must be able to promote and be transparent about the technology involved and share their knowledge with others ( Xiong et al., 2019 ). Indeed, close collaboration between all actors in the process, especially in more fragile political systems, could contribute to wider and faster adoption of the technology, as all key players in the election process, including voters, must trust e-voting solutions.…”