Impact of Organizational Dehumanization on Employee Knowledge Hiding.

Um E Rubbab,Hina Shahab,Sana Aroos Khattak,Naveed Akhter

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.803905

Abstract

Knowledge hiding has become an alarming issue for the organizations. Knowledge hiding is an employee’s intentional attempt to conceal knowledge requested by others at the workplace. Employee knowledge hiding significantly influences an organization’s effective functioning. This research is an attempt to extend previous work on antecedents of knowledge hiding. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, it is proposed that receiving poor treatment by organizations in the form of organizational dehumanization creates psychological distress among employees toward the organization. Distress among workers in turn intervenes the path and increases the likelihood of engaging in knowledge hiding behaviors. An employee’s felt obligation for constructive change (FOCC) may moderate the relationship between organizational dehumanization and employee psychological distress. Data for the current study were collected from 245 employees of the telecommunication sector in three-time lags. The results support the direct and indirect effect of organizational dehumanization on employee knowledge hiding behaviors through the mediation of psychological distress. The results also support the moderation of FOCC between organizational dehumanization and psychological distress. Furthermore, the findings of the study may help organizational practitioners and managers about the value of effective organizational climate and practices for better organizational functioning through knowledge sharing and providing insight into undesirable repercussions of organizational dehumanization. Implications for organizations and practitioners are discussed.

Highlights

In this era of competition, the organizations are striving to gain a competitive advantage over others by increasing their productivity (Kuranchie-Mensah and Amponsah-Tawiah, 2016)
We argue that organizational dehumanization will result in detrimental psychological consequences in the form of psychological distress, which will instigate sufferers to take knowledge hiding as a form of resource loss preventing actions (Jiang et al, 2019; Bari et al, 2020; Rezwan and Takahashi, 2021)
Perceived organizational dehumanization is significantly correlated with perceived distress (r = 0.34∗∗, p < 0.01) and employee knowledge hiding (r = 0.49∗∗, p < 0.01)

Summary

Introduction

In this era of competition, the organizations are striving to gain a competitive advantage over others by increasing their productivity (Kuranchie-Mensah and Amponsah-Tawiah, 2016). In this competition race, the organizations are pressuring their employees with excessive workloads and mechanical structure while ignoring the humanistic perspective, resulting in employee mistreatment. Most of these “negative or abusive” behaviors were attributed to the leadership style of an organizational leader, such as abusive supervision, tyrant leadership, despotic. The dark side of employee behaviors has emerged as the gravest issue in organizations, depleting employee psychological resources (Irshad and Bashir, 2020; Yao et al, 2020; Pereira and Mohiya, 2021)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion