How does leader's knowledge hiding kill innovative work behavior

Abstract

PurposeNumerous studies have linked the role of knowledge sharing with project success, while limited attention has been given to the consequences of knowledge hiding. The unwillingness of leaders to share information may cause the failure of assigned tasks, thus affecting the success of any project. Withholding information by leaders can potentially result in incomplete ideas, thus causing poor innovative work behaviour (IWB) among employees. Despite such knowledge-hiding behaviour, most employees continue working positively towards IWB.Design/methodology/approachIn order to test these proposed hypotheses, data were collected from active information technology (IT) projects using purposive sampling technique. The purposive sampling method was selected to specifically focus on projects that require innovation. A total of 324 responses were considered for final analyses, which were collected in time lag.FindingsThe study outcomes amplified the important issue of knowledge-hiding behaviour among leaders that adversely affected the IT project industry and how such behaviour led to failure as a result of poor IWB. Apparently, IWB intervened between knowledge-hiding behaviour among leaders and project success. However, high curiosity among employees seemed to reduce the negative effects of knowledge-hiding behaviour among leaders.Originality/valueThis study substantially adds to the leadership literature and holds immense importance for project professionals by drawing their attention to the neglected area causing project failure.

The nexus of project management approaches in sustainable development: innovative behaviors as a mechanism in the Polish financial industry

“…, 2019) – encouraged project team members to create and implement innovative ideas in different types of projects. In turn, leaders hiding knowledge has led to poor innovative behaviors in IT projects (Mubarak et al. , 2022).…”

Exploring the underlying mechanism between fear of losing power and knowledge hiding

“…Though employees have certain reasons of hiding knowledge at the workplace for example, workplace incivility and cynicism ( Anand et al, 2022 ), interpersonal injustice ( Cao, 2022 ), workplace bullying ( Islam and Chaudhary, 2022 ), and peer abusive supervision ( Ma et al, 2022 ) but KH also has some devastating consequences on both individuals and organizations ( Serenko and Bontis, 2016 ; Ellmer and Reichel, 2021 ; Nguyen et al, 2022 ). For instance, KH decreases creativity ( Černe et al, 2014 ; Bari et al, 2019 ), kills innovative work behavior ( Černe et al, 2017 ; Mubarak et al, 2022 ), and reduces employee performance ( Anand and Hassan, 2019 ). Moreover, it also damages the interpersonal relationship between employees ( Connelly and Zweig, 2015 ) and creates intra-group conflicts ( Peng et al, 2020 ) within the organizations.…”

The effect of top‐down knowledge hiding on subordinates' task performance in Chinese R&D projects: the mediating role of leader‐member ‘guanxi’

“…First, only a handful of studies investigated the consequences of top-down knowledge hiding by focusing on subordinates' extra-role performance (Arain et al, 2019(Arain et al, , 2020Mubarak et al, 2022). For instance, leader-member knowledge hiding was found to have a negative influence on supervisees' organizational citizenship behavior (Arain et al, 2020) and subordinates' innovative work behavior (Arain et al, 2019;Mubarak et al, 2022). R&D teams depend heavily on the specialized expertise of diverse team members to achieve project goals (Edmondson and Nembhard, 2009).…”

“…Second, existing research justifies the harmful effects of top‐down knowledge hiding on subordinates' behavioral outcomes by operationalizing this construct as a single variable (Arain et al, 2019; Mubarak et al, 2022; Zhang and Min, 2022). Although the counterproductive effects of knowledge hiding are obvious, there is no straightforward conclusion regarding the relationship between project managers' knowledge hiding and subordinates' task performance because of the differentiated natures of various knowledge‐hiding behaviors (i.e., evasive hiding, playing dumbing, and rationalized hiding).…”