Linking proactive and reactive helping behaviour to knowledge hiding: the moral licencing perspective from China

Abstract

ABSTRACT This research explores when and how employees’ helping behaviour leads to subsequent knowledge hiding. Using moral licencing theory, it examines the psychological mechanisms driving employees’ behavioural shift from good to bad. Analysis of data from a multi-point tracking questionnaire in China reveals that: (1) Both proactive and reactive helping behaviours can stimulate psychological entitlement. (2) Proactive and reactive helping indirectly influence evasive hiding and playing dumb through psychological entitlement, but not rationalized hiding. (3) Reactive helping is more likely to induce a moral licencing effect than proactive helping. (4) Moral ownership negatively moderates the relationship between proactive and reactive helping and psychological entitlement. Furthermore, moral ownership negatively moderates the mediating effect of psychological entitlement. This study offers an important theoretical framework for understanding the behavioural change from ‘good to bad’ in the workplace, offering managers insights to develop strategies for governing employees’ helping behaviour and knowledge hiding.