Perceived organizational politics, knowledge hiding and diminished promotability: how do harmony motives matter?

Dirk De Clercq · Yunita Sofyan · Yufan Shang · Luis Espinal Romani

27 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Knowledge Management

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Knowledge Management and Sharing Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior Management and Organizational Practices

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to investigate an underexplored behavioral factor, knowledge hiding, that connects employees’ perceptions of organizational politics (POP) with their diminished promotability, while also considering the moderating role of employees’ harmony motives in this process. Design/methodology/approach The research hypotheses are tested with multisource, three-round data collected among employees and their supervisors. Findings Employees’ beliefs about self-serving organizational decision-making increase their propensity to hide knowledge, which, in turn, diminishes their promotability. This intermediate role of knowledge hiding is more prominent when their disintegration avoidance motive is strong but less prominent when their harmony enhancement motive is strong. Practical implications A refusal to share knowledge with organizational colleagues, as a covert response to POP, can create a negative cycle for employees. They are frustrated with decision-making practices that are predicated on favoritism, but by choosing seemingly subtle ways to respond, they compromise their own promotion prospects. To avoid this escalation, employees should adopt an active instead of passive approach toward maintaining harmony in their work relationships. Originality/value This research contributes to extant research by detailing a hitherto overlooked reason that employees’ frustrations with dysfunctional politics may escalate into an enhanced probability to miss out on promotion opportunities. They respond to this situation by engaging in knowledge hiding. As an additional contribution, this study details how the likelihood of this response depends on employees’ harmony motives.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 27 citations exist upstream.

References

1981Evaluating Structural Equation Models with Unobservable Variables and Measurement Error 1988Structural equation modeling in practice: A review and recommended two-step approach.1988On the Evaluation of Structural Equation Models 2011Sources of Method Bias in Social Science Research and Recommendations on How to Control It 2004Confidence Limits for the Indirect Effect: Distribution of the Product and Resampling Methods 2001The Influence of Culture, Community, and the Nested‐Self in the Stress Process: Advancing Conservation of Resources Theory 1988An Updated Paradigm for Scale Development Incorporating Unidimensionality and Its Assessment 2017Conservation of Resources in the Organizational Context: The Reality of Resources and Their Consequences

Cited by

2023Perceived organizational politics, organizational disidentification and counterproductive work behaviour: moderating role of external crisis threats to work 2022Workplace Favoritism and Workforce Sustainability: An Analysis of Employees’ Well-Being 2024Insights into the use of theories in knowledge hiding studies: a systematic review

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.