Leaders’ knowledge hiding and front-line employee service sabotage

Purpose: Utilizing social learning theory, this paper investigates a theoretical model that links knowledge hiding by leaders to employee service sabotage via moral disengagement (MD). It also investigates an important boundary condition by analyzing the role of leader-member exchange on both leaders’ knowledge hiding-moral disengagement (relationship) and on the overall indirect relationship between leaders’ knowledge hiding (LKH) and front-line service sabotage (SS). Utilizing a three-wave research design, data were collected using a structured questionnaire from 265 employees working in the service sector. The results reveal strong support for the proposed moderated mediation model. Leaders’ knowledge hiding is a strong significant predictor of employees’ service sabotage directly and via moral disengagement. We found that leader-member exchange accentuated the association between leaders’ knowledge hiding and moral disengagement in addition to accentuating the mediated relationship. The study enhances our understanding of the consequences of leaders’ knowledge hiding for service and, in particular, service sabotage. The study is one of the few to investigate leader as opposed to employee knowledge hiding in service organizations. The findings highlight that service organizations need to take proactive stems to minimize the hiding of knowledge by leaders because of its determinant consequences for service sabotage.