Knowledge withholding in online knowledge spaces: Social deviance behavior and secondary control perspective

Abstract

Knowledge withholding, which is defined as the likelihood that an individual devotes less than full effort to knowledge contribution, can be regarded as an emerging social deviance behavior for knowledge practice in online knowledge spaces. However, prior studies placed a great emphasis on proactive knowledge behaviors, such as knowledge sharing and contribution, but failed to consider the uniqueness of knowledge withholding. To capture the social‐deviant nature of knowledge withholding and to better understand how people deal with counterproductive knowledge behaviors, this study develops a research model based on the secondary control perspective. Empirical analyses were conducted using the data collected from an online knowledge space. The results indicate that both predictive control and vicarious control exert a positive influence on knowledge withholding. This study also incorporates knowledge‐withholding acceptability as a moderating variable of secondary control strategies. In particular, knowledge‐withholding acceptability enhances the impact of predictive control, whereas it weakens the effect of vicarious control on knowledge withholding. This study concludes with a discussion of the key findings, and the implications for both research and practice.