A cultural perspective on knowledge hiding: the role of organisational justice, distrust and cultural intelligence

Extant research has established knowledge hiding as one of the potential barriers to positive individual and organisational performance. This study aims to expand the empirical research on knowledge hiding by studying its manifestation in a multicultural context, where intercultural differences can further aggravate knowledge hiding. We investigate the relationship between organisational justice and knowledge hiding behaviour through the underlying mechanism of distrust. Furthermore, cultural differences can impact the perceptions of justice creating distrust, which in turn can lead to undesirable employee behaviours such as knowledge hiding. We also examine the moderating role of cultural intelligence (CQ) as an effective mechanism to mitigate the organisational justice-knowledge hiding relationship. The findings of this research revealed a negative relationship between organisational justice and knowledge hiding. In addition, distrust partially mediated the relationship between organisational justice and knowledge hiding. The results also indicated the moderating effect of CQ on the organisational justice-knowledge hiding relationship.