Role of Leader-Member Exchange, Knowledge Hiding, Prosocial Motivation, And Impression Management Motivation for The Creative Potential of Employees

Abstract

The main purpose of the research was to investigate whether employees who develop a high-quality leader-member exchange (LMX), do they also engage in knowledge exchange activities or they hide knowledge, and do their knowledge hiding affects creativity. Data for this investigation were collected from 413 subordinates and their respective 57 supervisors working in a pharmaceutical organisation operating in Jakarta, Indonesia. The collected data was then analyzed for regression and mediated moderation with MPlus. We found that LMX may have a negative side, as those in quality exchange relationships with supervisors may hide knowledge from others, which may affect the creative potential of employees. With this research, we have shown that interpersonal mechanisms in general and LMX in particular will not always be beneficial for the exchange of knowledge and creativity of employees. We contributed to creativity research by introducing prosocial motivation and impression-management motivation as having a moderating role in knowledge hiding and creativity relationships. Our research revealed that the motivation of a focal employee overrides knowledge hiding, the underlying social exchange, knowledge hiding, and creativity relationships. The motivation of focal employees influences the social exchange patterns by affecting knowledge hiding among coworkers, thereby enhancing/ suppressing their creativity. Limitations and future research directions were also discussed.