The dark side of knowledge sharing: Exploring “knowledge sabotage” and its antecedents

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to advancements in the knowledge management domain by exploring knowledge sabotage as the most extreme counterproductive behaviour that hinders knowledge sharing. Through a painstaking analysis of the literature, we developed nine original propositions which shape an innovative framework of individual-, group-, and organisational-level factors influencing this phenomenon. The proposed framework offers the identification and conceptual development of several antecedents, which promote a better comprehension of the sabotage of knowledge towards practitioners and scholars. Since the recent formalisation of “knowledge sabotage”, this is the first work that comprehensively presents the inherent literature and posits such influencing factors, by laying the first stone to obtain a better understanding of antecedents that may hinder or foster intra-organisational knowledge sharing.