The Moderating Effect of Cross-Cultural Psychological Adaptation on Knowledge Hiding and Employee Innovation Performance: Evidence from Multinational Corporations

Abstract

This study explores the effects of three dimensions of knowledge hiding: evasive hiding (EH), rationalized hiding (RH), and playing dumb (PD), on employee innovation performance in multinational corporations. Additionally, the moderating effects of cross-cultural psychological adaptation on the above relationships are analyzed. In terms of the empirical analysis, corresponding assumptions were investigated with a sample of 273 respondents from Chinese multinational corporations in different industries and regions. The research findings show that EH and PD significantly negatively impact employee innovation performance in multinational corporations. In contrast, RH has a significant positive impact on the latter. Notably, cross-cultural psychological adaptation weakens the negative relationship between EH, PD and employee innovation performance, while strengthening the positive relationship between RH and employee innovation performance in multinational corporations. This study provides a new perspective for understanding the internal relationship between knowledge hiding and employee innovation performance. It comprehensively reveals the impact mechanism of knowledge hiding on innovation performance at the individual level by exploring the boundary effect of cross-cultural psychological adaptation. This study expands the literature on knowledge management and innovation on the theoretical side. On the other hand, this study suggests that RH may improve the employee innovation performance of multinational corporations, and provides a potential research direction for predicting the positive consequences of employees’ knowledge-hiding behavior. On the management side, this study offers practical guidelines for the human resource management of multinational corporations. Managers can promote cooperation and innovation among colleagues with cultural differences in home and host countries by improving employees’ cross-cultural psychological adaptability, thus improving employee innovation performance.