Abusive Supervision Effects on Employee Knowledge Hiding Behavior in Academia

Despite the prevalence of research on abusive supervision in the workplace, little is known about its influence on employee knowledge hiding behaviors in the context of academia. Thus, this paper aims to investigate the abusive supervision influence on employee knowledge hiding behaviors in an academic context. To investigate the purpose of our study, data were collected from 179 respondents working in private universities located in the southern region of India and were analyzed using the partial least square (PLS) method where variance-based structural equation modeling (SEM) was adopted. The study reveals a negative relationship between abusive supervision and employees’ inclination to hide knowledge from co-workers and supervisors. Subsequently, co-worker support acts as a complementary mediator in this relationship and organizational support does not act as a suppressor variable. The study enriches leadership and knowledge management literature, and supplements prior studies on positive knowledge-related behaviors, like those on knowledge sharing, by furthering our understanding of the nature of knowledge hiding.