Trapped in a loss spiral: how and when work alienation relates to knowledge hiding

Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we hypothesize that work alienation promotes knowledge hiding through emotional exhaustion and that job mobility moderates the relationship between work alienation and emotional exhaustion. We conducted two time-lagged studies in China to test our research model. Studies 1 and 2 found that work alienation was positively related to knowledge hiding and that emotional exhaustion mediated this relationship. Study 2 revealed that job mobility attenuated the positive effect of work alienation on emotional exhaustion and the indirect effects of work alienation on evasive hiding, playing dumb, and rationalized hiding via emotional exhaustion. The present research sheds valuable light on the processes (how) and contingencies (when) whereby work alienation affects knowledge hiding for the first time, thus extending prior research and encouraging further explorations on the topic of work alienation and knowledge hiding.