Telling “White Lies”: How Rationalized Knowledge Hiding influences New Product Development

Abstract

Knowledge hiding studies have largely focused on its dark side, while we theorize the potential positive effect of rationalized knowledge hiding in the context of entrepreneurial firms’ new product development speed. By extending and integrating theoretical perspectives of rationalized knowledge hiding and trust, we theorize that rationalized knowledge hiding accelerates the new product development speed of entrepreneurial firms that has been cognized as a critical component that matters firm survival and growth. To test this assumption, we developed and analyzed a pair data of founder-CEO and the founder-CTO of 137 high technology entrepreneurial firms in China. The empirical results suggest that CTO’s rationalized knowledge hiding in CEO accelerates the new product development speed of high technology entrepreneurial firms. Our analysis also shows that such acceleration would be slower when a CEO’s affective trust in the CTO is higher, while the acceleration would be faster when a CEO’s cognitive trust in CTO is higher. Overall, we theorize that rationalized knowledge hiding produces positive effect on the new product development speed of entrepreneurial firms.