Are Emotionally Intelligent Employees Less Likely to Hide Their Knowledge?

Abstract

In today's knowledge‐intensive economy, organizations are constantly faced with new challenges to be more innovative (Salaman & Storey, ). Therefore, they have increasingly viewed knowledge management (KM) as an important strategy. Many have even implemented explicit knowledge sharing (KS) practices in an attempt to maintain their competitive advantage and improve performance (Hsu, ; Law & Ngai, ). However, much of the knowledge utilized by the organization is out of its control since it is held and managed at the individual level. Moreover, employees often choose to conceal this knowledge (Connelly et al., ; Peng, ; Connelly & Zweig, ; Demirkasimoglu, ) a phenomenon known as knowledge hiding (KH). This paper reviews the literature on KH and on Emotional Intelligence (EI) theory and practice, arguing that there is a potential connection between the two. Specifically, KH may be reduced, through increased teamwork, trust, and organizational commitment, which are all outcomes of high EI in employees. A narrative overview approach (Green et al., ) was used to find, synthesize, and review the literature. A search of the available research literature was performed across some of the major digital library sources including the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Emerald, Google Scholar and ProQuest databases. A meta‐synthesis was then used to integrate, evaluate, and interpret the findings. The resulting review provides a summary of the current literature and offers a rationale for conducting future research. This paper is useful for both academics and practitioners who are concerned with the incorporation of EI practices into their KM strategies. It could also provide further insight into organizational KM strategy, specifically relating to hiring, training, and promoting KM processes. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Why and when knowledge hiding in the workplace is harmful: a review of the literature and directions for future research in the Chinese context

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Tit for Tat: Abusive Supervision and Knowledge Hiding-The Role of Psychological Contract Breach and Psychological Ownership

“…Recently, Dawkins, Tian, Newman, and Martin [86] reasoned that psychological ownership could be improved by bringing structural changes in the organization. This is important because studies indicate that individual differences may affect individuals' KH differently [87,88].…”

Inspired by Emotions, Guided by Knowledge: Which Emotional Cues Dominate Knowledge Management Research?

“…KM researchers within the IS domain have used a vast array of research methods and approaches [11] to examine KM theories, processes and technologies [15]. KM research on emotions has been insightful, but either specific to one single emotion, such as trust [47,48] or pride [55], or focusing on related concepts such as emotional intelligence [10,16,53]. More studies investigated positive emotions as contributor to successful KM [1,33,49,51] than negative emotions as hindrance to successful KM use and outcomes [31,39], which is why we decided to conduct a comprehensive investigation and classification of both positive and negative emotions.…”