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

Perceived organizational politics, organizational disidentification and counterproductive work behaviour: moderating role of external crisis threats to work

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to unpack the relationship between employees’ perceptions of organizational politics and their counterproductive work behaviour, by postulating a mediating role of organizational disidentification and a moderating role of perceived external crisis threats to work.

Design/methodology/approach

The empirical assessment of the hypotheses relies on survey data collected among employees who work in a large banking organization.

Findings

Perceptions that organizational decision-making is marked by self-serving behaviour increase the probability that employees seek to cause harm to their employer, because they feel embarrassed by their organizational membership. This mediating role of organizational disidentification is especially prominent when they ruminate about the negative impact of external crises on their work.

Practical implications

This study details an important danger for employees who feel upset with dysfunctional politics: They psychologically distance themselves from their employer, which then prompts them to formulate counterproductive responses that likely make it more difficult to take on the problem in a credible manner. This detrimental dynamic is particularly risky if an external crisis negatively interferes with their work functioning.

Originality/value

This study adds to prior research by detailing an unexplored but relevant mechanism (organizational disidentification) and moderator (external crisis threats) by which perceived organizational politics translates into enhanced counterproductive work behaviour.

How and when voluntary citizenship behaviour towards individuals triggers vicious knowledge hiding: the roles of moral licensing and the mastery climate

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how voluntary citizenship behaviour towards an individual (VCB-I) is linked with vicious knowledge hiding (VKH), and why members, within a mastery climate, tend to participate in less VKH after their engaging in VCB-I. The authors, according to the moral licensing theory, propose that moral licensing mediates the relationship between VCB-I and VKH, and that a mastery climate weakens the hypothesised link via moral licensing.

Design/methodology/approach

This study surveys 455 valid matching samples of subordinates and supervisors from 77 working teams in China at two time points and explores the relationship between VCB and VKH, as well as the underlying mechanism. A confirmatory factor analysis, bootstrapping method and hierarchical linear model were used to validate the research hypotheses.

Findings

The results show that VCB-I has a significant positive effect on VKH; moral credentials play a mediating role in the relationship between VCB-I and VKH; and the mastery climate moderates the positive effect of moral credentials on VKH and the mediating effect of moral credentials. In a high-mastery climate, the direct effect of moral credentials on VKH and the indirect influence of VCB-I on VKH through moral credentials are both weakened, and conversely, both effects are enhanced in a low-mastery climate. However, contrary to the expected hypothesis, moral credits do not mediate the relationship between VCB-I and VKH, which may be due to the differences in the mechanisms between the two moral licensing models.

Originality/value

Prior research has mainly focused on the “victim-centric” perspective to examine the impacts of others’ behaviour on employees’ knowledge hiding. Few works have used the “actor-centric” perspective to analyse the relationship between employees’ prior workplace behaviour and their subsequent knowledge hiding intention. In addition, this study enriches the field research on the voluntary aspects of organisational citizenship behaviour, which differs from its involuntary ones.

Mitigating knowledge hiding behaviour through organisational social capital: a proposed framework

Purpose

This study aims to develop a framework that demonstrates the role of social capital in alleviating knowledge hiding behaviour in organisations while also considering the moderating roles of perceived organisational politics and the perceived value of knowledge in this process.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a systematic literature review of research papers on the topic of knowledge hiding to develop a framework for mitigating knowledge hiding.

Findings

This paper conceptualises social capital into three interrelated dimensions (e.g. structural, cognitive and relational). Based on the findings of the review, all the three social capital dimensions can potentially mitigate an individual’s propensity towards knowledge hiding. Additionally, the paper integrates two potential moderators: perceived organisational politics and perceived value of knowledge, which could undermine the outcomes of social capital in mitigating knowledge hiding.

Research limitations/implications

Although the proposed framework may provide preliminary insights to practitioners and scholars, one of its key limitations is that it is conceptual. Future empirical research is needed to validate the proposed framework.

Originality/value

Existing research has focused on studying the antecedents and consequences of knowledge hiding. However, scant scholarly work explores how such behaviour can be mitigated. This paper addresses this gap and contributes to understanding how organisations can alleviate the prevalence of knowledge hiding by developing their social capital and by focusing on contextual factors.

Pandemic crisis and employee skills: how emotion regulation and improvisation limit the damaging effects of perceived pandemic threats on job performance

This study details the possible escalation of employees' perceptions of pandemic threats into diminished job performance, while considering a mediating role of their sense of job insecurity and a moderating role of their emotion regulation and improvisation skills. Results based on multisource, three-wave data show that employees' perceived pandemic threats compromise their work-related performance, because they believe that their job is at risk. This mediating role of perceived job insecurity is mitigated by employees' greater ability to control their emotions and come up with novel ideas on the spot. This study accordingly pinpoints employees' conviction that they may not be able to keep their jobs as a crucial mechanism by which the hardships of a global pandemic generate negative performance consequences, as well as how organizations can contain this risk by helping employees hone their pertinent personal skills.