The Relationship Between Perceptions of Leader Hypocrisy and Employees' Knowledge Hiding Behaviors: Testing a Moderated Mediation Model

Jiping Wang; Shuhui Tian; Yu Wang; Yujie Guo; Xiaoyang Wei; Xingchi Zhou; Yishi Zhang

doi:10.2147/PRBM.S381364

The Relationship Between Perceptions of Leader Hypocrisy and Employees' Knowledge Hiding Behaviors: Testing a Moderated Mediation Model

Psychol Res Behav Manag. 2023 Jan 15:16:133-147. doi: 10.2147/PRBM.S381364. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Jiping Wang¹, Shuhui Tian¹, Yu Wang², Yujie Guo¹, Xiaoyang Wei³, Xingchi Zhou¹, Yishi Zhang^{4

5}

Affiliations

¹ School of Management, Wuhan Textile University, Wuhan, People's Republic of China.
² School of International Business and Management, Sichuan International Studies University, Chongqing, People's Republic of China.
³ School of Foreign Studies, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
⁴ School of Management, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, People's Republic of China.
⁵ School of Management, Jinan University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.

Abstract

Purpose: Knowledge-sharing is critical for the survival and development of today's organization, but employees are not always willing to share their knowledge and sometimes even hide it intentionally or unintentionally. Taken from the leadership perspective, this paper aims to investigate the influence of leader hypocrisy on employees' knowledge-hiding behaviors. Drawing on the self-determination theory (SDT), this paper explores the mediating role of basic psychological needs satisfaction, as well as the moderating effect of employees' interdependent self-construal on the relationship between basic psychological needs satisfaction and knowledge-hiding behaviors. The moderated mediation effect is also tested.

Methods: The data were collected from companies located in mainland China. The data sample for analysis consists of 336 employees. Hierarchical regression analysis was adopted to test the hypotheses of our proposed model.

Results: Leader hypocrisy are positively related to knowledge-hiding behaviors (b = 0.490, p < 0.01). Basic psychological needs satisfaction plays a partial mediating role in such relationship (b =0.118, [0.056, 0.210]). The interdependent self-construal moderates the relationship between basic psychological needs satisfaction and knowledge-hiding behaviors (b = 0.134, p < 0.01), as well as the moderated mediation effect (BootSE = 0.018, [-0.083, -0.009]).

Conclusion: The results show that leader hypocrisy is positively related to knowledge-hiding behaviors, and basic psychological needs satisfaction partially mediates such relationship. The interdependent self-construal weakens the negative relationship between basic psychological needs satisfaction and knowledge hiding.

Keywords: basic psychological needs satisfaction; interdependent self-construal; knowledge hiding; leader hypocrisy.

Grants and funding

This study was funded by the 11th batch of key project “Machine learning Embedded SFC Model Research” of Hubei Provincial Humanities Key Research Base - Enterprise Decision Support Research Center; This study was also supported in part by the Young Scientists Funds of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education of China under Grant 19YJC630236; in part by the Philosophy and social science research project of Hubei Provincial Department of Education under Grant 19Q093; in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 71702066; in part by the National Social Science Foundation of China under Grant 17BGL230; and in part by the Institute of Distribution Research, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics under Grant IDR2021YB004;.