Unveiling the Notion of “Knowledge Hoarding” in a Post-Epidemic global Business Environment

Abstract

As our readers ponder deeply over the context of organizations in the post-pandemic scenario, workplaces are tending to change through a little more than a year until now. This has definitely affected every individual employee (or any organizational member), almost daily during the period mentioned, primarily with regards to how knowledge can be created, sustained, and transferred. Expectedly, an understandable impact on organizational performance by and large has been reported quite extensively. And professionals are simply hopeful that the “menace of knowledge hoarding” can be mitigated with time. As such, it would be imperative to state here that “knowledge hoarding” is a comparatively less intentional or discriminatory form of concealment in the workplace because in this case: (1) knowledge or information is not subjected to a professional request (unlike “knowledge hiding”) and (2) the behavioral scope offered by “knowledge hoarding” is lower. As time passes, “knowledge hoarding” becomes extensively deliberate, and strategic efforts are put in to resist sharing of relevant knowledge. Here, factors like “modified” organizational culture and level of commitment 66toward work and peers (in the wake of workplaces surviving “online” and work-groups remaining virtual) will allow any employee (or organizational member) a “free pass” for indulging in “knowledge hoarding” practices. Intentional actions pertaining to “knowledge hoarding” cans harm the organization and its members in many ways and shall be detrimental to both organizational and individual performances in the long run.