Being a victim: how knowledge hiding affects student creativity and performance in higher education

Taking the perspective of the hidden object in knowledge hiding of higher education institutions (HEIs), this article explores how HEI students’ perceived knowledge hiding (PKH) affects their knowledge resources in the form of academic creativity and academic performance. Based on social information processing (SIP) theory, we investigate the mediating role of perceived social undermining (PSU) and the moderating role of proactive personality. Using time-lag data from 306 HEI students collected in China, we found that PKH was a strong predictor of PSU, and PSU mediated the negative relationship between PKH and academic creativity and academic performance. In addition, proactive personality not only played a moderating role between PKH and PSU, but also moderated the negative indirect effect of PKH on academic creativity and academic performance (through PSU). Overall, our research expands the literature on the consequences of knowledge hiding from the victim’s perspective.