Purpose

Knowledge hiding, intentionally withholding work-relevant information, is detrimental to organizations, yet practiced by supervisors and employees. Based on social learning and social exchange theories, this study aims to uncover the effects of supervisor knowledge hiding, abusive supervision and employee political skill on employee knowledge hiding behaviors, namely, evasive hiding, playing dumb and rationalized hiding. We compare the two destructive supervisor behaviors in their predictive values toward employee knowledge hiding and examine the role of employee political skill in mitigating their effects.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on survey data collected from 598 German-speaking employees, we used path analysis to test the hypotheses.

Findings

The two destructive supervisor behaviors and employee political skill predicted employee evasive hiding and playing dumb; supervisor knowledge hiding additionally predicted employee rationalized hiding. The predictive value of supervisor knowledge hiding was 2.5 times larger than that of abusive supervision and political skill. The effects of destructive supervisor behaviors were weaker for more politically skilled employees.

Originality/value

We examine two destructive supervisor behaviors conjointly and show the differences between them regarding their predictive value toward employee knowledge hiding. Furthermore, we investigate the role of political skill in knowledge hiding.

中文翻译：

---

主管知识隐藏、滥用监督、员工政治技能对员工知识隐藏行为的共同影响

目的

知识隐藏，故意隐瞒与工作相关的信息，对组织有害，但主管和员工却在实践。本研究基于社会学习和社会交换理论，旨在揭示主管知识隐藏、滥用监督和员工政治技能对员工知识隐藏行为的影响，即回避隐藏、装傻和合理化隐藏。我们比较了两种破坏性主管行为对员工知识隐藏的预测价值，并检查了员工政治技能在减轻其影响方面的作用。

设计/方法/方法

根据从 598 名讲德语的员工收集的调查数据，我们使用路径分析来检验假设。

发现

两种破坏性的主管行为和员工的政治技巧预示着员工逃避躲藏和装聋作哑；主管知识隐藏还预测员工合理隐藏。主管知识隐藏的预测值是滥用监督和政治技巧的 2.5 倍。对于政治技能较高的员工，破坏性主管行为的影响较弱。

原创性/价值

我们联合研究了两种破坏性的主管行为，并展示了它们之间在对员工知识隐藏的预测价值方面的差异。此外，我们调查了政治技能在知识隐藏中的作用。