Toxic leadership and knowledge hiding behaviour: examining a serial mediation mechanism

Abstract

Knowledge management is the need of today's complex business environment. Effective knowledge sharing develops cooperation among employees which enhances firm performance and creativity. Leaders are the main players which transform their followers and develop sharing habits among them. Knowledge is required by co-workers to accomplish a particular task. Like positive, dark leadership phenomenon also exists in the organisations and affects the knowledge sharing process by forecasting knowledge hiding behaviour. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to find out the effect of toxic leadership on knowledge hiding behaviour. Moreover, this study investigates the underlying mechanism that how leader toxicity affects employee organisational identification and self-esteem which urges them to involve in knowledge hiding behaviour. Based on the leader-member exchange theory, current research suggests that knowledge hiding behaviour is the outcome of leader toxicity. A survey of 158 employees from the education sector has empirically validated the hypotheses. SEM was used to analyse structural paths using Smart PLS 3.0. The result shows that toxic leadership has a direct effect on knowledge hiding behaviour whereas dual mediation unveils the underlying mechanism. Current research has enriched the literature on toxic leadership and provided important managerial implications to practitioners.