Impact Of Coworker Knowledge Hiding On Employee Social Undermining

In the era of knowledge economy,knowledge,as a core resource for the sustainable development and success of enterprises,has undoubtedly been incorporated into the important category of modern enterprise management.However,in the field of knowledge management,besides behaviors such as knowledge transferring and sharing,which are considered “good”,employees often encounter the awkward situation of coworker knowledge hiding.Currently,research related to coworker knowledge hiding focused on antecedent variables from the hidden perspective,while the research on the outcome variables of coworker knowledge hiding was not abundant,which mainly concentrated on job behavior,job performance,interpersonal relationship,attitude,and psychology.Studies had shown that negative events or negative experiences such as knowledge hiding could trigger strong emotional reactions and even led to deviant behaviors(Mayer et al.,2012),but research on the impact of knowledge hiding on emotions was still rare and research on the effects of deviating behaviors was still stuck on simple mechanisms of action.The affective events theory was a macro structure that encompasses events,emotions,cognitions,attitudes,and behaviors.The theory stated that different events would affect work attitudes and behaviors by triggering different emotions,and whether an individual generated an emotional response also depended on the individual’s cognitive evaluation of the work event.According to the affective events theory,coworker knowledge hiding,as a frequent negative work event in the workplace,could induce negative emotional reactions.Furthermore,existing research had shown that when inappropriate or unexpected events occured,employees tended to develop hostility(Averill,2012).Therefore,this study regarded coworker knowledge hiding as a negative work event and employee hostility as a negative emotional reaction,to explore the impact of coworker knowledge hiding on employee hostility.Additionally,the affective events theory suggested that negative emotional reactions further leaded to negative work behaviors,with some research suggesting that social undermining was often associated with hostility(Keltner et al.,2003).Thus,this study regarded employee social undermining as a negative work behavior,to explore the impact of employee hostility on employee social undermining.Furthermore,the affective events theory proposed that personal traits were one of the important factors affecting emotional reactions and served as important boundary conditions between work events and emotional reactions.Stability attribution meant that people could find meaningful information from other people’s behaviors to get the stable characteristics(inclinations)of actors,and thus predicted their possible behaviors(Jones & Davis,1965),which were closely related to personal characteristics.Besides,stability attribution,as an attribution style,affected the formation of individual expectations,specific emotions,and further affected subsequent behaviors.Therefore,this study explored the moderating effect of stability attribution on the relationship between coworker knowledge hiding and employee hostility.In addition,the affective events theory suggested that during the cognitive evaluation stage,individuals assessed whether an event was relevant or important by referring to personal goals,which determined the strength of the event’s impact.And task interdependence was closely related to how goals were achieved and was often considered an important boundary condition in knowledge management research.Therefore,this article also explored the moderating role of task interdependence in the relationship between coworker knowledge hiding and employee hostility.In summary,based on the affective events theory,this article constructed a causal pathway of “coworker knowledge hiding-employee hostility-employee social undermining” and explored how coworker knowledge hiding affected employee social undermining through employee hostility.Furthermore,this article investigated the moderating role of task interdependence and attribution stability.The study collected data from 148 employee-coworker pairs in a financial institution using questionnaires and validated the model hypotheses using statistical analysis software such as SPSS26.0,MPlus8.0,and R.The research findings were as follows: coworker knowledge hiding had a positive impact on employee social undermining through employee hostility;task interdependence positively moderated the relationship between coworker knowledge hiding and employee hostility;stability attribution negatively moderated the relationship between coworker knowledge hiding and employee hostility.The results of this study,based on the theory of affective events,confirmed the mechanism of "coworker knowledge hiding-employee hostility-employee social undermining".At the same time,it clarified the moderating role played by task interdependence and stability attribution.On the one hand,this study further expanded the research on knowledge hiding and organizational negative behaviors,and was also another successful application of the theory of affective events in the Chinese context;on the other hand,it provided new insights for organizations to engage in knowledge management and offered guidance and suggestions for managers to avoid negative emotions and negative interpersonal behavior in organizations.