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“Articulating Cognizance About What to Hide What not": Insights into Why and When Ethical Leadership Regulates Employee Knowledge-Hiding Behaviors

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Abstract

Given the dearth of research examining the distinctions across various facets of employee knowledge-hiding (KH) behaviors, there is little known about why and when leadership negatively influences playing dumb and evasive hiding but positively influences rationalized hiding. The present study fills this void by hypothesizing that employee justice orientation (JO) acts as a mediator of the associations of ethical leadership (EL) with different facets of employee KH behaviors. We also propose employee conscientiousness moderates the relationship of EL with JO and the indirect relationships of ethical leadership with distinct variants of employee KH behaviors. The results based on time-lagged data from 387 employees provide support for the hypothesized relationships. Together, our research provides a more nuanced account of the influence of leadership on employee KH behaviors that can facilitate the development of more appropriate interventions to deal with the intricate problems related to employee KH behaviors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management Sciences, COMSATS University Islamabad, Lahore Campus, Lahore, Pakistan

    Moazzam Ali & Imran Shafique

  2. Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK

    Muhammad Usman

  3. School of Management, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China

    Muhammad Aamir Shafique Khan

  4. School of Management, University of Bath, Bath, UK

    Farooq Mughal

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  1. Moazzam Ali
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  2. Muhammad Usman
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  3. Muhammad Aamir Shafique Khan
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  4. Imran Shafique
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  5. Farooq Mughal
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Correspondence to Muhammad Usman.

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Ali, M., Usman, M., Khan, M.A.S. et al. “Articulating Cognizance About What to Hide What not": Insights into Why and When Ethical Leadership Regulates Employee Knowledge-Hiding Behaviors. J Bus Ethics 190, 885–895 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05426-9

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