Two facets of pride and knowledge hiding: an empirical analysis

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to investigate whether or not the two facets of pride, hubristic and authentic, are associated with knowledge hiding. Design/methodology/approach This study collects survey data (N = 343) from one of the leading information technology (IT) companies in Myanmar at two stages with a two-month interval. This study uses multiple regression analyses to test this study’s hypotheses. Findings Results reveal that hubristic pride is positively related to knowledge hiding, whereas the relationship between authentic pride and knowledge hiding is negative. These relationships are contingent upon the level of employees’ self-efficacy. Research limitations/implications This study suggests that managers should include measures for moral emotions in their recruitment and selection criteria. Furthermore, the authors suggest that managers should design strategies to induce moral emotions at the workplace and enhance personal resources (e.g. self-efficacy), which have an instrumental effect in maximizing the prosocial facet of pride (i.e. authentic pride) as well as minimizing adverse experiences of the antisocial facet of pride (i.e. hubristic pride), thereby reducing knowledge hiding. Originality/value The findings shed light on the significance of the inclusion of emotional variables in understanding employees’ knowledge hiding. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first empirical study to examine the combined effect of emotive and cognitive variables in predicting knowledge hiding by demonstrating that hubristic pride only mitigates knowledge hiding behavior among high self-efficacious employees.