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The most shy woman has courage enough to talk scandal.
– Dutch proverb
Introduction
As we enter the era of knowledge economy, work is becoming more complex, and managers must work hard to motivate employees to actively share what they have to enable the organization gain a competitive advantage (Gagné et al., 2019; Oliveira et al., 2020; Ouakouak and Ouedraogo, 2019). However, most employees only display a low level of knowledge sharing, and many choose to hide their knowledge to uphold their irreplaceable position in the organization because of the complexity of the organizational environment and the scarcity of knowledge resources (Burmeister et al., 2019; Fong et al., 2018). Thus, controlling or reducing the adverse impact of knowledge-hiding (KH) behavior on the organization has garnered considerable attention of many scholars (Černe et al., 2014; Gagné et al., 2019; Pan et al., 2018).
Previous research on the antecedents of KH behavior primarily focused on individual characteristics, competitive working environment, leadership style and situational factors but less on the impact of employee negative events on KH behavior (Jha and Varkkey, 2018; Khalid et al., 2018; Škerlavaj et al., 2018). For instance, Zhao et al. (2016) presented a preliminary discussion on the correlation between workplace exclusion and KH behavior based on the negative reciprocity theory and believed that KH behavior is a type of revenge behavior of employees against their exclusion; the study enriched the antecedents of KH behavior. However, similar to workplace exclusion, another employee’s negative behavior seems to be more prevalent throughout the organization; this behavior is a negative workplace gossip (NWG). Baumeister et al. (2004) reported awareness of the “subtle” harm that such behavior could cause to employees; thus, they sought more attention from the academic community. However, it did not garner considerable attention from scholars, especially the impact of perceived NWG on employee behavior (Mills, 2010; Wu et al., 2018a). Based on Zhao et al. (2016), we speculated that NWG, as a type of negative event, also affects employees’ KH behavior; however, the negative reciprocity theory cannot elucidate the correlation between these two variables because Chinese employees attach great significance to the seemingly harmonious interpersonal relationship in their communication with colleagues. Hence, they...