The Empirical Investigation Between Ethical Leadership and Knowledge-Hiding Behavior in Financial Service Sector: A Moderated-Mediated Model

Muhammad Mohsin,Sobia Naseem,Xiaojun Wang,Qiang Zhu,Muhammad Nazam

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.798631

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the impact of ethical leadership on knowledge-hiding behavior of the employees working in the financial services sector under the mediating role of meaningful at work and moderating role of ethical climate. For this purpose, data were collected from two hundred and fifteen employees of financial services providing organizations. The already-established scales were followed to develop an instrument that was used to obtain responses from the respondents. Collected data were analyzed by applying the structural equation modeling through Smart PLS and Process Macro. The results indicate that ethical leadership and meaningful work (MW) reduce knowledge-hiding behavior of employees at work, while ethical leadership positively impacts the influential work of employees at the workplace. Further, the relationship between ethical leadership and knowledge-hiding behavior is partially mediated by MW. Similarly, ethical climate moderated the relationship between ethical leadership and knowledge-hiding behavior. This research makes valuable contributions to the existing literature on leadership and knowledge management. From a practical point of view, this study stresses that managers at work should promote ethical leadership styles to promote MW, which will reduce knowledge hiding. Thus, in this way, it will enhance the innovation and creativity within organizational circuits. The limitations and future directions of this study are also listed.

Highlights

In a service organization, the impairment of interpersonal interactions and knowledge transfer processes may be more significant than the lack of expertise
This study examines the impact of “ethical leadership on employees’ work-hiding behavior through the mediating role of meaningful work (MW).”
The first step of analysis is to determine the model reliability and validity. For this purpose, Smart partial least squares (PLS) was used for data analysis for several reasons; first, it deals very well with the small sample sizes. It eradicates the issue of normality due to the sample bootstrapping technique (Khalid et al, 2018; Bashir et al, 2020; Mohsin et al, 2020; Naseem et al, 2021)

Summary

Introduction

The impairment of interpersonal interactions and knowledge transfer processes may be more significant than the lack of expertise. It is that a dynamic and unpredictable demand structure involves great ingenuity and innovations to match the fast-to-changing consumer needs and informal. Ethical Leadership and Knowledge Hiding Behavior sharing of information to satisfy these requests. Despite the adverse impact on service sector industries, the practice of information hiding is ignored . Few management interventions have been shown to challenge knowledge-hiding practices in the service sector. This has increased demands for more research on the phenomena of knowledge hiding in service firms (Fawehinmi et al, 2020)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion