Understanding employees’ knowledge hiding behaviour: the moderating role of market culture

The effective utilisation of organisational knowledge may promote organisational success as knowledge is one of an organisation’s most important assets. However, existing literature tends to focus on understanding knowledge sharing behaviour within organisational contexts, where knowledge hiding, a related but distinct phenomenon, has been relatively under-researched. The current study integrates social exchange theory and the theory of interpersonal behaviour to systematically examine knowledge hiding behaviour in knowledge-based companies in Malaysia. A survey with 207 participants was conducted to test the direct effects of nine predictors and the moderating role of market culture on the effects on knowledge hiding dimensions (evasive hiding, playing dumb, and rationalised hiding). Overall, the findings showed that the effects differed across the three dimensions of the phenomenon. Knowledge complexity was found to have significant positive influences on all dimensions, while perceived reciprocal benefits, cognition-based trust, and task-relatedness did not affect knowledge hiding. The other predictors (perceived loss of knowledge power, perceived losing face, perceived organisational incentives, affective-based trust, and self-efficacy) had different impacts on different dimensions of knowledge hiding. Market culture played an important moderating role in employees’ decisions about hiding knowledge. Theoretical and managerial implications and future research directions were formulated based on these findings.