The Effect of Knowledge Hiding on Turnover Intentions

Abstract

The study investigates whether knowledge hiding in organizations impact employees’ turnover intentions. The paper also explores if employee job dissatisfaction and work disengagement mediate this relationship separately and sequentially. Based on the social exchange theory, we hypothesize that knowledge hiding will trigger a negative reciprocity behavior depicted in dissatisfaction and disengagement that will eventually lead to turnover intentions. The data was collected from 125 participants and was analyzed using IBM SPSS software. The findings suggest that knowledge hiding has a direct effect on turnover intentions; the results also show that dissatisfaction and disengagement separately mediate this relationship, indicating that indirect effects are present; however, the sequential mediation of dissatisfaction and disengagement was not statistically significant. The study findings provide a better understanding on how knowledge hiding can generate devastating negative outcomes, helping organizations and managers to minimize turnover intentions by encouraging knowledge sharing, and keeping employees satisfied and engaged.