It seems that employees sometimes hide knowledge such as information and expertise from their colleagues. At times this may be simply a by-product of unclear communication, but at others, the hiding of knowledge is intentional.
Burmeister, Fasbender and Gerpott (2018) were interested in the intentional hiding of knowledge, and in particular, the emotional outcome on an employee of hiding knowledge from their colleagues.
The literature describes three approaches that employees adopt for intentionally withholding knowledge:
- Evasive hiding – the employee may offer incorrect, misleading or incomplete information.
- Playing dumb – pretending to be unaware of the information being sought.
- Rationalising the hiding – providing a justification for why the information is not available.
The investigators argue that research provides information about the negative emotional experiences of the targets of the knowledge hiding but as yet has not looked at the emotional impact on the perpetrators. They were interested in the emotional consequences on employees engaging in knowledge hiding, and in particular, whether the emotional consequences vary depending on the three different approaches used to intentionally hide the information. They hypothesised different emotional outcomes based on whether the individual engages in evasive hiding, playing dumb or rationalising the hiding.
In an organisational setting, withholding knowledge may be perceived as a transgression of accepted social norms given that the sharing of knowledge would generally be expected and be seen to be the acceptable response. In addition, in knowledge hiding there is an intentional decision to withhold information and it has therefore been argued that there are elements of lying and deception with evasive hiding seen to be the most deceptive approach followed by playing dumb and then rationalising hiding.
As a result the investigators proposed a model in which intentional hiding can induce in the individual feelings of guilt and shame. The key differences between these two emotions are that guilt occurs as a result of a person’s perceived negative action whereas shame arises in the context of the individual blaming themselves rather than their action.
The authors then draw on the moral emotions literature to hypothesise actions that may come about because of the feelings of guilt and shame that emerge. Research suggests that guilt motivates people to engage in actions that compensate their victims for their behaviour, that is, to make it up to them some other way to ensure good relations. In contrast, shame typically leads to withdrawal from the situation.
On this basis the investigators argued that the two most deceptive approaches to hiding knowledge (evasive hiding and playing dumb) will lead to what have been classified as organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB; behaviour that compensates the individual but is not rewarded by the organisation) as a way to compensate for their knowledge hiding for those experiencing guilt, but will not be the case for those experiencing feelings of shame.
The investigation
This research therefore sought to determine whether knowledge-hiding behaviour would elicit feelings of guilt and shame (Study 1) and whether the three approaches to knowledge hiding demonstrated differential associations with guilt and shame (Study 2).
Study 1: Scenario-based experiment
In Study 1, a vignette was used to manipulate knowledge hiding with 156 American adults who were full-time employees across a wide range of industries. The vignette presents a workplace scenario where a colleague approaches them seeking specialised information which they hold. Participants are randomly allocated to either a condition in which they are presented with the scenario and told that they have the knowledge that is requested but decide to withhold the knowledge (experimental condition), and asked how that makes them feel. In the second (control) condition they are told that they decide to openly provide the information and again asked how that makes them feel. Measures of guilt and shame are then administered.
The results show a significant difference between the experimental and control condition confirming that those who took part in the knowledge hiding experienced significantly higher levels of guilt and shame.
Study 2: Field experiment
In Study 2, data was sourced from a large sample of adult employees in Germany (N=3487) who were employed at least 20 hours per week. An online questionnaire administered at two time points (two-week period in between) measured the extent to which employees withheld knowledge from their colleagues on a scale of 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree) with questions eliciting information about the use of the three approaches to knowledge hiding. The measures of guilt and shame utilised in Study 1 were administered at the first time point and at Time 2 a measure of organisational citizenship behaviour was administered.
The findings
Structural equation modelling was used to examine the relationships between the variables and revealed that playing dumb, but not evasive hiding, was significantly linked with guilt and shame. As expected rationalised hiding was not related to guilt or shame. That evasive hiding was not linked to guilt or shame was contrary to expectations and the authors propose that this may be influenced by the fact that in evasive hiding some information is provided, albeit perhaps misleading, whereas in playing dumb no information is given.
As such, providing some knowledge may have an effect on the emotional impact. It also suggests that evasive hiding is less likely to lead to behaviours aimed at compensating colleagues for the knowledge hiding. The authors provide practical implications to guide both employers and employees in what is perhaps, for whatever the reasons, potentially inescapable employee activity.
doi: 10.1111/joop.12249