Discussion:

Our main aim in this study was to investigate the associations between POP,
Knowledge hiding, and the moderating effect of three big personality traits agreeableness,
conscientiousness, Need for power rather than big five personality traits because previous
researches have confirmed their impacts on different counterproductive work behaviors
We demonstrated that POP positively predicts knowledge hiding that, in turn, negatively predicts
employee creativity. agreeable people are more eager to help and much cooperative towards others
and try to make feel comfortable others. Since knowledge hiding is harmful to others so these
people are more expected to less prone to engage in knowledge hiding behaviors (Connelly and
Zweig,2015).The same case is with conscientiousness personality traits, conscious people have
more responsible and hardworking nature they like to follow rules and norms and try to value
others opinion and love to share knowledge with others and these people are less likely to engage
in knowledge hiding practices this assumption is strengthened by Connelly et al. (2012) . Need for
power refer to the eager or greed of power they want to rule others and don’t share knowledge
with others because they think that they can sustain their autonomy by storing knowledge with
them. This type of personality often prefers to hide knowledge (Cheng and Li, 2001).

The results showed that Perceived organizational politics is positively related to knowledge
hiding, people that perceive high levels of organizational politics are more likely to hide
knowledge. Agreeableness moderates the relationship between perceived organizational politics
and knowledge hiding, in such a way that this relationship was most negative when an individual
scored high on agreeableness and low on perceived organizational politics. . Agreeableness is
needed to work in peace and resolve the conflicts. Rich (2006) surveyed study supported that the
confirmation of significant and moderate correlation between agreeableness and engagement.
Agreeable employees can be more positive and motivated to resolve the problems and conflicts.
Therefore, agreeable employees can be more engaged in their job because they can save their
energy and flow it to their work roles. Conscientiousness also moderated the relationship between
perceived organizational politics and knowledge hiding, in such a way that this relationship was
most negative when an individual scored high on conscientiousness and low on perceived
organizational support. Need for power too moderated the relationship between perceived
organizational support and knowledge hiding, in such a way that this relationship was most
positive when an individual has a high need for power and scores low on perceived organizational
politics.

Following the limitations of this study, A large sample size can be taken that helps to derive more
accurate results. Secondly, this study is also just studying the moderator impacts of three
personality traits rather than five. It might be fruitful for future studies to investigate the
moderating roles of other two personality traits as well. Thirdly In the current study knowledge
hiding is going to be assessed by using a one-dimensional scale. It would be interesting for future
studies to separately examine the relationships between POP and the three sub-dimensions of
knowledge hiding (i.e., evasive hiding, rationalized hiding.