Abstract

Research on knowledge hiding has largely focused on its antecedents while overlooking its consequences. Drawing on moral cleansing theory, we adopt a “perpetrator-centric view” and posit that employees who engage in playing dumb and evasive hiding–two specific knowledge hiding behaviors that involve deception–will subsequently perform more organizational citizenship behavior directed toward individuals (OCB-I) because they perceive a loss of moral credits following their moral transgression. Further, we propose that the indirect effects are contingent on perpetrators’ moral identity internalization. We tested our hypotheses using a time-lagged research design with a sample of 362 respondents from a large pharmaceutical group company. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that employees who engaged in playing dumb and evasive hiding subsequently exhibited more OCB-I as they perceived a loss of moral credits, whereas employees who engaged in rationalized hiding did not. In addition, the positive relationships between playing dumb and evasive hiding with perceived loss of moral credits were stronger when perpetrators had high moral identity internalization, as were the indirect effects of playing dumb and evasive hiding on OCB-I via perceived loss of moral credits. Our research contributes to the understanding of when and how engaging in knowledge hiding affects perpetrators and their compensatory behaviors toward coworkers.