Content area
Full Text
Introduction
“Knowledge is the only resource that increases with use”. (Probst et al., 2002)
The belief that knowledge actually expands when it is shared has been deeply rooted in the mainstream knowledge management literature. Unfortunately, not all employees will behave accordingly and might perceive knowledge as a limited resource that needs to be hidden. In fact, some employees intentionally hide knowledge from their peers. Knowledge hiding, formally defined as an intentional attempt to conceal or to withhold knowledge that others have requested (Connelly et al., 2012), has important consequences for organizations. Previous research suggests that knowledge hiding positively correlates with interpersonal distrust (Connelly et al., 2012), harms interpersonal relationships (Connelly and Zweig, 2015) and diminishes creativity (Černe et al., 2014). Knowledge hiding is particularly damaging to organizations because the distrust among employees that it creates leads to a negative spiral of retaliation (Černe et al., 2014). Given such detrimental consequences, we need to learn more about why individuals engage in knowledge hiding.
The existing research on knowledge hiding has thus far emphasized the interpersonal factors (i.e. interpersonal distrust) that affect how an individual will respond to another’s request for knowledge (Černe et al., 2014; Connelly et al., 2012). However, an employee’s decision to hide knowledge occurs within a broader context, and is likely to be influenced by situational factors and individual differences (Demirkasimoglu, 2015; Peng, 2013). Previous research on knowledge hiding has examined some situational factors, including knowledge sharing climate as antecedents of knowledge hiding (Connelly et al., 2012; Pan and Zhang, 2014; Peng, 2013). However, a consideration of how situational factors and individual differences combine to affect knowledge hiding provides us with a more complete understanding of why and when this behavior occurs in organizations. This is the focus of our study.
The specific situational factor that we consider is time pressure, defined as either subjectively perceived time pressure or the imposition of a deadline (Kelly and Karau, 1999; Pepinsky et al., 1960). There is evidence that when employees experience time pressure, they prioritize their own activities and focus less on the needs of others (Ellis, 2006). While knowledge might be increasing with use (Probst et al., 2002), time most certainly does not. This...