How do job insecurity and perceived well-being affect expatriate employees’ willingness to share or hide knowledge?

Abstract

Employee well-being is now at the core of organizational human resource management (HRM) strategies as firms attempt to grasp the importance of human resources while building competitive advantages. However, external factors such as the localization of labor can adversely affect expatriate employees’ perceptions of firm-level well-being. The Saudi Arabian government’s localization policies mean that organizations are replacing expatriate employees with local employees to avoid government-imposed penalties. Therefore, it is important to understand how this job insecurity might affect expatriate employees’ perceptions of well-being and knowledge management behaviors. This study examines the influence of job insecurity on employees’ perceptions of well-being and knowledge sharing or knowledge hiding strategies. The data for this study were collected from 265 expatriate employees working at different organizations in Saudi Arabia. The study uses partial least squares path modeling to test the research hypotheses. Some of the findings contradict previously reported findings because of the nature of the research context. The study shows the significant influence of job insecurity and employees’ perceptions of work engagement and knowledge sharing. No significant association was observed between job insecurity and knowledge hiding. Work engagement has a significant association with knowledge sharing and burnout. Finally, burnout is significantly associated with knowledge hiding behaviors by expatriate employees.