Abstract
It is important to identify which factors are crucial in impeding or promoting the knowledge hiding among employees is a vital area
for business research. This paper is focused on two important areas knowledge hiding and employee creativity. Recently knowledge
hiding has gained much attention from the research scholars. The aim of this paper is to explore how knowledge hiding effects on
employee’s creativity. Drawing on social exchange theory it is purposed that if employees hide their knowledge than it stimulates
the reciprocal effect in which other colleagues are also not ready to share their ideas, knowledge, and information with them. Case
study as a research methodology was used and 43 semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect the data from the respondents
of the case study company. After data collection, for data analysis, this study used open, axial and selective coding. The findings of
this study are mixed as they suggest that all three types of knowledge hiding i.e. rationalized hiding, evasive hiding and playing
dumb increase and decrease employee’s creativity in the organization. This study provides insight that knowledge hiding behaviors
must discourage employees to increase their creativity. The findings of this could be used as a benchmark for other developing
countries as well as the first world economies who have been struggling with the affairs of knowledge hiding and its effect on
employee’s creativity. Based on our results this study also provides some important practical and theoretical implications.
Suggestions for future research are also presented.
Ahmed Abdul Hameed, Dr Farooq Anwar, Dr Muhammad Waqas, Muhammad Umar. (2020) Effect of Knowledge Hiding on Employees Creativity, Paradigms , Vol 14, Issue .
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