Share or hide? Investigating positive and negative employee intentions and organizational support in the context of knowledge sharing and hiding

Abstract

This paper contributes by investigating positive and negative individual employee intentions as well as positive and negative organizational support in the context of knowledge sharing and hiding. We do so by developing two key models, which we then examine empirically. We posit that achieving knowledge sharing attitudes and behavior is through positive organizational support or knowledge hiding could occur due to negative organizational support. We further extend this argument and posit that, achieving knowledge sharing attitudes and behavior is by a combination of positive employee intention and positive organizational support. However, we argue that three other combinations would lead to knowledge hiding in organizations. We critically evaluate and analyze the existing literature on knowledge hiding and theoretically utilize Vroom’s (1964) ‘expectancy motivation theory’ and ‘organizational justice’ as a lens to develop a framework. Contextually, we chose a large multinational corporation operating in Saudi Arabia, as this region is where knowledge sharing becomes interesting and crucial to study a relatively new phenomenon. Our findings identify why employees either share or hide knowledge, and how and to what extent the organization extended its support towards minimizing hiding and encouraging sharing knowledge. More importantly, this paper identifies how it was the employees as well as the organization’s collective responsibilities towards avoiding or minimizing hiding and encouraging and rewarding sharing, as this has immense implications on the bottom line in any business.