Ethical leadership and knowledge hiding: testing the mediating and moderating mechanisms

Purpose Recent scholars have established that knowledge hiding does not equate to the lack of knowledge sharing. Due to a scarcity of papers on knowledge hiding, this paper aims to understand the mechanisms through which ethical leadership influences knowledge hiding based on social learning theory and social cognitive theory. Design/methodology/approach The field study involves 243 employees from public listed companies in Malaysia. Partial least square structural equation modelling is used to test the hypothesised relationships. Findings The results indicate that moral disengagement mediates the relationship between ethical leadership and knowledge hiding. Furthermore, organisational commitment moderates the negative relationship between ethical leadership and knowledge hiding, such that the negative relationship is stronger when organisational commitment is high. Originality/value This study is the first to investigate the influence of ethical leadership on knowledge hiding through the mediating effect of moral disengagement. Moreover, organisational commitment is an important boundary condition for the relationship between ethical leadership and knowledge hiding. The implications for practice and future research are also discussed.