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JOEPP
9,3
422
Received 14 July 2021
Revised 14 December 2021
25 January 2022
Accepted 11 April 2022
Journal of Organizational
Effectiveness: People and
Performance
Vol. 9 No. 3, 2022
pp. 422-448
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2051-6614
DOI 10.1108/JOEPP-05-2021-0131
The effect of intra-organizational
knowledge hiding on employee
turnover intentions: the mediating
role of organizational
embeddedness: a case study of
knowledge workers of IRIB
Saeed Sheidaee
Tehran University, Tehran, Iran
Maryam Philsoophian
Malek-Ashtar University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, and
Peyman Akhavan
Qom University of Technology, Qom, Iran
Abstract
Purpose – This paper aims to examine the relationship between intra-organizational knowledge hiding
(I-OKH) and turnover intention via the mediating role of organizational embeddedness.
Design/methodology/approach – A model was developed and tested with data collected from 276
knowledge workers from the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) using Smart PLS3 to test the
hypotheses.
Findings – Results show that organizational embeddedness mediates the relationship between
intra-organizational knowledge hiding and turnover intention because intra-organizational knowledge
hiding relates negatively to organizational embeddedness, which, in turn, has a negative effect on turnover
intentions.
Practical implications – This study can be beneficial for organizations that employ knowledge workers.
The management should pay attention to the existence and consequences of intra-organizational knowledge
hiding to control one of the causing factors of weakened organizational embeddedness, which, in turn, increases
employee turnover intentions.
Originality/value – This study is the first attempt to analyze knowledge hiding from a third-person point of
view. Moreover, this is the first to examine the mediating role of organizational embeddedness in the
relationship between intra-organizational knowledge hiding and employee turnover intentions, enriched by
employing the data from the knowledge workers beyond the Anglo-American-European world.
Keywords Knowledge hiding, Turnover intention, Organizational embeddedness, Job embeddedness,
Knowledge workers
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Knowledge is considered an asset and a form of power when it comes to gaining competitive
advantage in organizations (Hu et al., 2009; Philsoophian et al., 2021). One way to improve
organizations’ competitive advantage is sharing knowledge among employees (Akhavan and
Hosseini, 2015; Akhavan and Philsoophian, 2018) so that personal knowledge turns into
organizational knowledge. While organizations spend a great deal of time and money on
creating a knowledge-sharing environment, many employees do not want to share
knowledge. In addition, if a lack of knowledge sharing is coupled with employee turnover,
knowledge leaves the organization with employees, which will influence organizational
effectiveness (Wright et al., 1994). When key and valuable employees leave an organization,
it not only decreases the quality of work and productivity, but imposes direct and indirect A case study of
costs upon the organization as well, including the costs of replacement, hiring, training and knowledge
pressure on the remaining employees (Dess and Shaw, 2001). Moreover, employee turnover in
cases where people are engaged in knowledge hiding (KH) can be costly for the organization
workers of
since others will need to spend more time acquiring the same knowledge. Finally, employees IRIB
who leave the organization might join competing organizations and strengthen them while
weakening the organization they left. Therefore, analyzing KH as one of the antecedents of
employee turnover intentions can be significant. 423
Knowledge hiding is “an intentional attempt by an individual to withhold or conceal
knowledge that has been requested by another person” (Connelly et al., 2012); the
intentionality of this process by the knowledge hider is emphasized (Cerne
et al., 2014;
Serenko and Bontis, 2016). KH is considered a common and generally troublesome issue for
organizations and their employees (Akhavan et al., 2015; Akhavan and Hosseini, 2016).
A study showed that 76% of employees in North America withhold their knowledge and
refuse to share it with coworkers (as cited in Connelly et al., 2012). Another study estimates
that Fortune 500 companies’ incapability to facilitate knowledge sharing costs them an
approximate $31.5 billion a year (Babcock, 2004). The field of KH has been receiving greater
scholarly attention recently, so much that 80% of papers on KH have been published in the
past three years (2018–2020). KH, therefore, is a universal phenomenon that usually
influences the competitive advantage gaining of organizations; it requires greater exploration
to be more thoroughly understood.
An organizational environment where knowledge hiding behaviors are commonplace can
negatively affect both the employees and the organization. Diminished creativity (Bogilovic
et al., 2017; Chen et al., 2020; Connelly and Zweig, 2015), reduced inter-personal trust (Cerne

et al., 2017; Yao et al., 2020), and interpersonal and organizational deviance (Singh, 2019) are
some of the problems caused by KH. One of the negative consequences of knowledge hiding is
turnover intention. TI refers to “an employee’s intention to voluntarily leave an organization.”
ITQ is used to study retention as it is a strong predictor of actual turnover (Griffeth et al., 2000;
Tett and Meyer, 1993). When someone engages in KH, it causes a loss of relationship, distrust
and reciprocal hiding by the knowledge seeker, accompanied by revengeful actions. This
creates a loop where the knowledge seeker him/herself becomes a knowledge hider (Connelly
et al., 2012; Serenko and Bontis, 2016). In other words, not only does the person who fails to
gain knowledge turn into a knowledge hider in future, but KH by different people in the
organization can create or expand a culture of KH, which we define as “Intra-organizational
knowledge hiding.” I-OKH is conceptualized as a second-order formative construct since
intra-organizational evasive hiding, playing dumb and rationalized hiding were treated as
first-order reflective dimensions.
With an increase in intra-organizational knowledge hiding (I-OKH), indices of
organizational embeddedness will be engaged and subsequently decrease, as a result of
which employees might want to leave the organization on grounds such as lack of a proper
organizational environment for intellectual prosperity (Serenko and Bontis, 2016).
Organizational embeddedness (on-the-job embeddedness) represents the collection of
forces that cause employees to feel attached to their organization and is comprised of three
components of fit (an employee’s compatibility with the organization), links (people’s social
connections with other people or groups in the organization) and sacrifice (potential financial
or psychological forfeiture in case of turnover) (Lee et al., 2017).
IRIB is Iran’s most comprehensive and influential news media and educational-cultural
institution. It is also the most extensive media organization that employs knowledge workers,
which is their most important asset. Employees in such organizations are responsible for
producing creative content and making changes in the media organization (caves, 2000). This
has potentially created a competitive advantage for media organizations (Moncarz et al., 2009),
JOEPP forcing them to consider employees an essential asset to be retained. For this reason, the
9,3 competitiveness of media organizations as a knowledge-intensive industry (Hertog and
Bilderbeek, 2000) is closely related to the management of creative people as knowledge workers
(Baptista Nunes et al., 2006).
When there is a disruption in the knowledge sharing process, the creativity of employees
as the competitive advantage of the media organization is harmed, causing severe problems
for employees and the organization, such as lowering the quality of relationships with
424 colleagues (decreased OE) and increasing employees tendency to leave the organization
(increased TI) (Bari et al., 2019; Fong et al., 2011). Accordingly, in this study, we aim to
investigate the effect of I-OKH on TI with the mediating role of OE in the IRIB as a knowledge-
intensive organization. Overall, the reasons for choosing IRIB can be summarized as follows:
(a) being the largest and most influential news media in Iran, (b) the importance of knowledge
sharing among the knowledge workers of this organization and (c) the high turnover rate in
this organization (about one person per month).
Many studies have explored the consequences of KH by focusing on either the knowledge
seekers or the knowledge hiders. Examples include reduced creativity in knowledge hiders
(Chen et al., 2020), decreased team viability for knowledge seekers (Wang et al., 2019b), and
damaged relationships or future withholding studied separately for the knowledge seeker
and the knowledge hider (Connelly and Zweig, 2015). However, none of the studies to this
point have analyzed KH from a third-person point of view. For instance, Serenko and Bontis’s
(2016) study has evaluated the perception of KH using three questions different from
Connelly’s et al. (2012) to discover the existence of the I-OKH environment. While those who
report KH incidents might have been victims of KH perpetrated by a limited number of
coworkers, this can create a false perception of the culture and environment of KH within the
organization. In addition, to the best of our knowledge, studies have not attempted to analyze
the effect of KH on the employees’ organizational embeddedness. Therefore, this study
explores whether I-OKH, perceived from all employees’ points of view, regardless of them
being a knowledge seeker or a knowledge hider, impacts employees’ turnover intentions
through organizational embeddedness. I-OKH refers to situations in which employees refuse
to answer to a knowledge seeker when requested to share knowledge or information or when
they intentionally provide irrelevant or incomplete information in response to such requests.
Thus, this study investigates these issues to address the following main objectives:
(1) Explore the direct effect of I-OKH on TI
(2) Examine the indirect effect of I-OKH on TI through the mediation of OE
This paper is made up of several sections, including a literature review, which discusses the
link between theories and latent variables, a discussion of the conceptual framework based on
which hypotheses are created, a section on research methodology, followed by a discussion of
results, data analysis, research and managerial implications, limitations and potential for
future research.

Theoretical background and hypotheses

Knowledge hiding
Knowledge hiding is defined as one’s intentional attempt to hide knowledge from the
knowledge seeker (Connelly and Zweig, 2015). KH is a dyadic interaction, not necessarily
negative but always intentional. KH is related to, but different from, knowledge hoarding,
workplace aggression, counterproductive work behavior (CWB), social undermining,
workplace incivility and deception. The differences between KH and these behaviors can
be explored from several aspects. While KH is intentional, for example, knowledge hoarding
can be unintentional (Connelly et al., 2012). Knowledge hiding also differs from
counterproductive work behavior since CWB is meant to hurt the organization and its A case study of
employees, while KH might not mean to produce harm. For example, an employee might ask knowledge
his/her coworker for confidential information, and the colleague might refuse to share the
information due to its confidential nature; in this case, there is no intention to harm.
workers of
Knowledge hiding occurs only in interaction with individuals and not with the organization. IRIB
It is also distinct from workplace aggression, social undermining, and workplace incivility
because, unlike them, KH does not necessarily intend to harm others. Finally, KH is different
from deception since it does not always have a deceptive nature. 425
KH can happen in three different forms of evasive hiding, playing dumb and rationalized
hiding. One who engages in evasive hiding offers only part of the knowledge to the seeker,
provides faulty information or misleads them by promising an answer in future while not
actually intending to help. This type of KH has the greatest component of deception. “Playing
dumb” happens when the hider pretends to be ignorant, incapable of giving answers, or
unaware of the requested knowledge. Some deception is mixed into evasive hiding and
playing dumb, which generates a sense of exclusion or revengefulness for the knowledge
seeker (Connelly and Zweig, 2015). Rationalized hiding is basically telling a “white lie” since
the hider refuses to answer to the seeker for reasons that are not necessarily negative. In
rationalized hiding, individuals do not intend to hide knowledge with mal-intent, and even
think about the benefit of the seeker and the organization and justify their refusal to share, as
not to upset their colleagues or lead to the falling apart of relationships as much as the other
types of KH (Sheidaee et al., 2021).
It might seem as if factors that expand the knowledge sharing environment in the
organization will shrink the knowledge hiding environment, but in fact, the facilitating
elements are quite different (Connelly et al., 2012). In other words, one can simultaneously
share and hide knowledge (Ford and Staples, 2008). For instance, they can share less valuable
knowledge while hiding the more valuable information (Cerne
et al., 2014). For this reason,
scholars have determined various antecedents for KH. If we break down knowledge hiding
antecedents into three categories of personal, interpersonal and organizational; examples
include psychological entitlement (Alnaimi and Rjoub, 2019), perceived time pressure
(Skerlavaj et al., 2018) and personality traits (Issac and Baral, 2019) at the personal level;
interpersonal distrust (Connelly et al., 2012; Yuan et al., 2020), power of knowledge seeker
(Labafi, 2017), revenge attitude (Rasheed et al., 2020) at the interpersonal level; workplace
incivility (Irum et al., 2020), negative feedback from organizational environment (Labafi, 2017)
and knowledge hiding norms (Butt and Ahmad, 2019) at the organizational level. Figure 1
shows the antecedents and consequences (knowledge seeker and knowledge hider) of KH.

Figure 1.
Antecedents and
consequences of
knowledge hiding
JOEPP According to this information, almost all research has not examined knowledge hiding from a
9,3 knowledge seeker-hider point of view simultaneously.
Knowledge hiding has many negative consequences for an organization. Table 1 points to
the studies that explore the negative consequences of KH.
According to the above table, the effect of KH on organizational embeddedness has not yet
been evaluated. Furthermore, most studies on KH have focused on analyzing KH from the
knowledge hider or knowledge seeker’s perspective. In contrast, the present study intends to
426 analyze intra-organizational KH.

The relationship between intra-organizational knowledge hiding and employee

turnover intention
Turnover intention is a psychological tendency used to estimate the possibility of employee
turnover in the near future (Mobley, 1982). Studies show that the strongest proxy and
predictor for actual turnover is turnover intention (Tett and Meyer, 1993; Zimmerman and
Darnold, 2009). Among the negative consequences of employee turnover are lowered
organizational performance levels, disruption in gaining competitive advantage, loss of social
capital, and weakened morale (Hom et al., 2017; Kacmar et al., 2006). Identifying key factors
that contribute to keeping employees in the organization is one of the important issues in
studies of employee turnover. Additionally, employee turnover intentions is a negative
consequence of knowledge hiding. The literature on organizational commitment and KH help
prove this point.
According to the three types of organizational commitment that Meyer and Allen (1991)
put forward and starting with affective commitment (“the employee’s emotional attachment
to, identification with, and involvement in the organization”), employees who observe
knowledge hiding will be less willing to identify with and be part of a network of employees
who work counterproductively. When it comes to continuance commitment (“an awareness of
the costs associated with leaving the organization”), people who face KH will have a weaker
sense of loss when leaving the organization because of learning fewer things from coworkers
and mentors, which contributes to employee turnover since one of the employees’ goals is
professional progress, requiring acquirement of knowledge from the environment and other
coworkers. Regarding the normative commitment (which “reflects a feeling of obligation to
continue employment”), employees who observe KH might feel limited in their opportunities
for growth and intellectual prosperity, be unhappy about their current status, and hence
think about leaving the organization in future.
In addition, there are studies on the consequences of KH that show its correlation with
higher turnover intentions among employees. For example, Serenko and Bontis (2016) found
that I-OKH can increase turnover intention among employees. Anand et al. (2020) claim that
KH has a negative effect on employee performance and creates a culture of reciprocal distrust
leading to a weakened sense of organizational identity and increased employee turnover
intentions. When people observe KH, it might weaken organizational commitment and
eventually lead to higher turnover intentions (Serenko and Bontis, 2016). Moreover, Butt
(2020) argues that higher turnover intentions among victims of KH is one of the negative
consequences of top-down KH. In general, “KH can be captured with a formative KH concept,
which accounts for the weighted summation of all forms of KH” (Fang, 2017). When KH
behaviors are aggregated to the organization level, the more KH there is in the organization,
the higher the employee’s willingness to leave. Bringing all this together, our first
hypothesis reads:
H1. Intra-organizational knowledge hiding (I-OKH) has a positive effect on turnover
intention.
Researcher(s) Research main variable Research outcome
A case study of
knowledge
Garg and Anand Knowledge seeker Reduces affective commitment workers of
(2020) Increases loneliness
Li et al. (2020) Knowledge hider Reduces idea implementation IRIB
Reduces creative process engagement
Jahanzeb et al. (2020) Knowledge hider Reduces job performance
Khoreva and Knowledge hider Reduces in-role job performance 427
Wechtler (2020) Reduces well-being
Bari et al. (2020) Knowledge hider Increases employees’ silence
Increases psychological contract breach
Butt (2020) Knowledge seeker Increases turnover intention
Increases inefficiency
Increases time-consuming
Reduces loyalty
Reduces creativity
Reduces interpersonal trust
Increases knowledge hiding victim’s resignation
Increases knowledge hider’s dismissal
Reduces firm’s business volume
Chaker et al. (2020) Knowledge hider Reduces customer relationship building performance
Reduce customer problem solving
Arain et al. (2020b) Knowledge seeker Increases subordinates’ moral disengagement
Reduces supervisor directed organizational
citizenship behavior increases supervisor directed
silence
Zhai et al. (2020) Knowledge hider Reduces online collaborative learning
Arain et al. (2020a) Knowledge seeker Reduces organizational citizenship behavior directed
at the supervisor
Increases distrust
Chen et al. (2020) Knowledge hider Reduces employee creativity
Peng et al. (2019) Knowledge hider Reduces team creativity
Jiang et al. (2019) Knowledge hider Reduces thriving
Reduces psychological safety
Arain et al. (2019) Knowledge seeker Reduces innovative work behavior
Reduces self-efficacy
Singh (2019) Knowledge seeker Reduces task performance
Increases workplace deviance
Zhu et al. (2019) Knowledge hider Reduces creativity
Malik et al. (2019) Knowledge hider Reduces creativity
Offergelt et al. (2019) Knowledge hider Increases turnover intention
Reduces job satisfaction
Reduces empowerment
Bari et al. (2019) Knowledge hider Reduces team creativity
Burmeister et al. Knowledge hider Increases shame
(2019) Increases guilt
Reduces organizational citizenship behavior
Alnaimi and Rjoub Knowledge hider Reduces Extra-role behavior
(2019)
Zhang and Min Knowledge hider Reduces project team performance
(2019) Reduces team learning
Wang et al. (2019b) Knowledge seeker Reduces team viability
Fong et al. (2018) Knowledge hider Reduces team creativity
Reduces absorptive capacity Table 1.
Negative consequences
(continued ) of knowledge hiding
JOEPP Researcher(s) Research main variable Research outcome
9,3


Cerne et al. (2017) Knowledge hider Reduces innovative work behavior
Rhee and Choi Knowledge hider Reduces employee creativity
(2017)
Bogilovic et al. Knowledge hider Reduces individual creativity
(2017) Reduces team creativity
428 Serenko and Bontis Intra-organizational Increases voluntary turnover
(2016) knowledge hiding (seeker) Increases reciprocal knowledge hiding
Connelly and Zweig Knowledge hider–seeker Causes future withholding
(2015) Hurts relationships


Cerne et al. (2014) Knowledge hider Reduces knowledge hider’s creativity
This study Intra-organizational Reduces organizational embeddedness
Table 1. knowledge hiding Increases turnover intention

The relationship between organizational embeddedness and turnover intention

While the focus of early turnover theories (March and Simon, 1958; Porter et al., 1976) was
mostly internal factors and personal attitudes of employees (like job satisfaction and
organizational commitment), which led them to leave an organization, the relatively new
variable recommended to be measured is job embeddedness (Hom et al., 2017). With the
emergence of job embeddedness as a concept, a greater emphasis has been placed on why
employees stay in the organization rather than why they leave (Rubenstein et al., 2019). Job
embeddedness is the collection of many organizational or community-based factors that
convince someone to stay in an organization (Mitchell et al., 2001). According to the job
embeddedness theory, individuals who are more embedded in both their organization
(on-the-job) and community (off-the-job) have stronger ties and connections, and are hence
less likely to leave the organization compared to less embedded individuals (Hom et al.,
2017). The three components of job embeddedness are fit, links, and sacrifice (Mitchell et al.,
2001). When someone’s characteristics fit in the organization or community and there is a
match between employees’ personal and organizational values, they are more willing to
stay (Elfenbein and O’Reilly, 2007). “Links” point to the formal and informal connections
that employees have with their colleagues, friends, and family. Links and connections
within the organization are considered a relational source for employees and make it
difficult to leave due to the hardships of their re-establishment outside the organization
(Halbesleben and Wheeler, 2008). Finally, “sacrifice” refers to the material or immaterial
cost of leaving the organization or community and the loss of benefits associated with it
(Mitchell et al., 2001). In other words, sacrifice is what a person loses when leaving the
organization or community (Mitchell et al., 2001). With a rising fear of losing material and
immaterial benefits, a person’s embeddedness and the pain of leaving the organization or
community increase.
The three components of job embeddedness have a compensatory nature (Lee et al., 2017),
meaning someone might not feel good about how they fit in the organization, but stay due to
prospects of progress in their job; hence the higher level of one component could make up for
another’s low level. Regarding the comparison of organizational (on-the-job) and community
(off-the-job) embeddedness, Lee et al. (2004) note that organizational embeddedness predicts
organizational outcomes better than community-based embeddedness. Each dimension has a
different effect on turnover intentions (Porter et al., 2019), but it is better only to use
organizational embeddedness when intending to analyze organizational outcomes
(Halbesleben and Wheeler, 2008; Ng and Feldman, 2010). As a result, we exclude
community embeddedness from this study.
 Organizational embeddedness is negatively related to employee turnover intention A case study of
(Kiazad et al., 2014). The more strongly a person is embedded in the organization they work knowledge
for, the fewer are forces that can persuade them to leave and the harder is the act of leaving
(Jiang et al., 2012; Lee et al., 2004). There have been many studies on the relationship between
workers of
organizational embeddedness and turnover intention. Self et al. (2020) found that IRIB
organizational embeddedness negatively affects turnover intention Self and Gordon (2019)
found that there is an inverse relationship between organizational embeddedness and
turnover intention. Dechawatanapaisal (2018) found that turnover intentions and actual 429
turnover decrease with an increase in organizational embeddedness. Therefore, based on the
literature, it is expected that as employees’ organizational embeddedness rises, their
willingness to leave the organization declines.
Thus, the following can be hypothesized:
H2. Organizational embeddedness has a negative effect on employee turnover intentions.

Mediation role of organizational embeddedness

I-OKH can hurt all three components of organizational embeddedness (fit, links and sacrifice).
First, based on the social exchange theory, people who volunteer to share knowledge with
other employees are more likely to receive similar help from those employees in future; this is
positive reciprocation (Serenko and Bontis, 2016). For this reason, when employees interact
and share their knowledge, a bond is created between them, and the better an employee’s
support of others is, the higher the possibility that it will be returned to them. On the other
hand, when employee support decreases, it hurts the links; hence, employees will have a
weaker sense of loss when leaving the organization and a higher turnover intention (Mitchell
et al., 2001; Shaw et al., 1998). Anand et al. (2020) also argue that when C observes that A
refuses to share knowledge with B, he/she will decide to refuse to share knowledge with B as
well. The spread of this behavior will create an environment of interpersonal distrust among
coworkers; I-OKH, therefore, reduces the quality of relationships among coworkers.
Second, I-OKH can influence employees’ fit. Most people believe that a knowledge-hiding
environment is immoral, unhealthy and harmful to the organization and its employees. When
an organization’s employees repeatedly come across situations where their coworkers are
hiding knowledge, they lose their will to be part of that organization or part of the group of
coworkers who engage in counterproductive behaviors, do not care about organizational goals,
and continuously ignore their peers. These conditions influence employees’ affective
commitment and increase turnover intentions (Jaros, 1997). Similarly, Garg and Anand
(2020) believe that perception of KH indirectly influences affective commitment. Besides, KH
makes knowledge hiders the target of their coworkers’ negative feelings, which leads to greater
distancing among employees and even isolation. Butt (2020) argues that when junior employees
have a complaint about senior management, they feel fearful and reluctant to act. This is while
employees see senior managers as representatives of the organization they work in. Moreover,
he argues that employees who were victims of KH resigned or were isolated after a while.
Third, I-OKH can also disrupt individual and team learning and performance. A sense of
stagnating professional and intellectual growth and lack of learning due to KH impacts
employees’ normative commitment to the organization, leading employees to perceive the
workplace environment as limiting their progress and feel disappointed with their
environment. Therefore, employees might not feel obligated to stay in the organization, and
have a stronger turnover intention since they believe they will not lose things of great value if
they leave. According to Connelly et al. (2012), when someone faces KH by their colleagues, they
are isolated; the resulting isolation leads to a heavier workload and a greater time commitment
to gain the hidden knowledge; these will eventually hurt the team performance. In addition,
when someone realizes their coworkers have intentionally hidden requested knowledge from


them, they will turn to KH themselves; this creates a loop of distrust (Bogilovic et al., 2017; Cerne
JOEPP
9,3 et al., 2014), resulting in reduced team learning (Zhang and Min, 2019). Labafi (2017) argued that
KH can reduce employee productivity, hurt the quality of employees’ work on aspects such as
problem solving and cognitive skills, and even influence employees’ professional progress.
Additionally, Connelly et al. (2019) and Wang et al. (2019b) state that KH hurts individual
performance, and Butt et al. (2020) and Serenko and Bontis (2016) claim that KH has a negative
effect on one’s work performance.
430 It is expected, therefore, that in an organization where a KH environment exists instead of a
knowledge-sharing environment, people will intend to leave the organization due to lowered
quality of relationships with coworkers (links), lacking a sense of fit in the organization (fit), and
a lower level of fear regarding loss of a job opportunity or helpful coworkers (sacrifice). More
specifically, employees’ organizational embeddedness will be affected, and their turnover
intention will increase when they perceive the organizational environment as deceptive.
The third and fourth hypotheses, therefore, are as follow:
H3. Intra-organizational knowledge hiding has a negative effect on organizational
embeddedness.
H4. Organizational embeddedness mediates the relationship between intra-organizational
knowledge hiding and turnover intention such that intra-organizational knowledge
hiding relates negatively to Organizational embeddedness, which, in turn, relates
negatively to employee turnover intention.
Figure 2 shows a conceptual model that encompasses the information mentioned above and
constructs of intra-organizational knowledge hiding, organizational embeddedness and
turnover intention.

Methodology
Data collection procedure and sample
The IRIB (Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting) is Iran’s largest and most powerful news
agency. According to the IRIB’s department of human resources, employee turnover among
journalists of this organization has been 116 people in the past ten years, which demonstrates
a high turnover rate of approximately one person per month. Besides, journalists as
knowledge workers are some of the most important human resources of this organization,
and their leave means a loss of competitive advantage. Knowledge workers engage in the
provision of services or production of new goods through employment of theoretical and
analytical knowledge acquired through official education (Drucker, 1999), and among whose
most important professional goals is the practical use of knowledge (Davenport, 2005). In this
study, the population is chosen as the knowledge workers of IRIB. Hence, prior to the main
study, a pilot survey was carried out with 37 respondents to check the questions’ accuracy

Organizational
embeddedness

Intra-organizational
evasive hiding

Intra-organizational Intra-organizational Turnover

playing dumb knowledge hiding intentions
Figure 2.
Intra-organizational
Research model rationalized hiding
and comprehension. The Participants were asked to comment on the items to ensure the A case study of
quality. Respondents did not report any difficulties or misunderstandings regarding the knowledge
survey. Using Morgan’s table, 330 questionnaires were prepared for a population of 3,000 and
distributed among the organization’s knowledge workers. These employees include
workers of
reporters, news officers, and news secretaries. The attrition rate of respondents and IRIB
research flow diagram are shown in Table 2 and Figure 3 respectively.
431
Measurement
Inta-organizational knowledge hiding. The three dimensions of I-OKH (I-OEH, I-OPD, and
I-ORH) were measured using a scale of 12 items developed by Connelly et al. (2012), where
each part contains four questions that have been modified according to the objectives of this
research. The five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) is
used for measuring I-OKH.

Questionnaire distributed Questionnaire returned Questionnaire lost Attrition rate (%)

Table 2.
330 276 54 16.36 Data attrition rate

Problem
Literature review
idenƟficaƟon

Research Gap
idenƟficaƟon
Distribu ng ques onnaires
Using Morgan's table
(N: 330)

1. News secretaries (N: 112)

Data collecƟon 2. News officers (N: 94)
3. Reporters (N: 41)
4. Others (N: 29)

Receiving ques onnaires

(N: 276)
Modeling and
Hypothesis tesƟng

Data process

Conclusion and Figure 3.

RecommendaƟon Research flow diagram
JOEPP Intra-organizational evasive hiding. I-OEH is measured with four items. For instance, “My
9,3 colleagues often agree to help [someone] but never really intend to.” The alpha value is 0.759.
Intra-organizational playing dumb. I-OPD is measured with four items. For instance, “My
colleagues often pretend that they do not know the information.” The alpha value is 0.715.
Intra-organizational rationalized hiding. I-ORH is measured with four items. For instance,
“My colleagues often explain that they would like to tell [someone] but are not supposed to.”
The alpha value is 0.886.
432 Organizational embeddedness. A seven-item global job embeddedness scale developed by
Crossley et al. (2007) was used to measure OE; the scale measures only the organizational
embeddedness (on-the-job embeddedness) aspects of job embeddedness. Sample items are, “I
feel attached to this organization,” and “I am too caught up in this organization to leave.” The
alpha value is 0.909.
Turnover intention. TI was measured with the three-item scale of Cammann et al. (1979).
Items include, “I often think about leaving this organization,” “It is very possible that I will
look for a new job soon,” and “if I may choose again, I will not choose to work for the current
organization.” The Alpha value is 0.761.
Control variables. We controlled for employees’ sex, age, education, tenure, hierarchical
rank and company nature in the data analysis because prior studies have suggested that


these may be significantly associated with KH (Matej Cerne et al., 2017; Peng, 2013).
The detailed questionnaire is available in Table A1 in Appendix.

Statistical model applied

The variance-based technique of partial least squares structural equation modeling
(PLS-SEM) has been chosen over other co-variance-based techniques such as LISREL and
AMOS in this study. The choice was made based on several factors (Hair et al., 2016),
including PLS-SEM’s focus on prediction, which is in line with the research objectives of this
study, PLS-SEM’s capacity not to be bound by normality assumptions unlike its
covariance-based counterpart, and, the better compatibility of PLS-SEM with the small
sample size of this study compared to CB-based SEM. User-friendliness and easy
employment of multiple relationships between variables are PLS-SEM’s advantages
(Hoe, 2008). Many scholars have used PLS in different fields such as organization,
business strategy, behavioral science, and management information systems (Wong, 2013).
In addition, using PLS-SEM has been suggested by Hair et al. (2016) when the indicators are
formative. Either way, previous studies have concluded that both SEM techniques
(variance-based and covariance-based SEM) arrive at similar results (Reinartz et al., 2009).

Model measurement
We assessed I-OKH which has been conceptualized as a combination of intra-organizational
evasive hiding, playing dumb and rationalized hiding (Connelly et al., 2012), using a one-
factor higher-order formative construct. In contrast, the rest of the unidimensional latent
constructs, i.e. organizational embeddedness and turnover intention, were assessed using
first-order reflective measurement models. Considering I-OKH as being formed by
rationalized hiding, evasive hiding and playing dumb is sensible (Shin and Kim, 2011)
because I-OKH, theoretically, consists of the three first-order constructs of KH. Likewise, the
conceptual domain of construct is changed by the omission or addition of the subconstructs.
It should be taken into account that I-OKH is shaped by all the first-order constructs, not vice
versa. The model for the present study is available in Figure 4.
Cronbach’s alpha is used to measure the reliability of this model (Hair et al., 2016).
Appropriate values for this alpha are considered to be > 0.7 (Hair et al., 2014); in this study, as
explained in Table 3, all values of Cronbach’s alpha are >0.7. Composite reliability (CR),
average variance extract (AVE), and reliability of each variable (factor loadings) are used to
 A case study of
knowledge
workers of
IRIB

433

Figure 4.
Structural model

Variables Items FL CR α AVE

Intra-organizational evasive hiding I-OEH1 0.648 0.848 0.759 0.585

I-OEH2 0.716
I-OEH3 0.886
I-OEH4 0.759
Intra-organizational playing dumb I-OPD1 0.469 0.822 0.715 0.546
I-OPD2 0.77
I-OPD3 0.811
I-OPD4 0.844
Intra-organizational rationalized hiding I-ORH1 0.883 0.922 0.886 0.747
I-ORH2 0.925
I-ORH3 0.879
I-ORH4 0.762
Organizational embeddedness OE1 0.827 0.929 0.909 0.651
OE2 0.66
OE3 0.876
OE4 0.828
OE5 0.802
OE6 0.838
OE7 0.8
Turnover intention TI1 0.855 0.86 0.761 0.673
TI2 0.804
TI3 0.801
Note(s): CR 5 composite reliability, α 5 Cronbach’s alpha, AVE 5 average variance extracted, FL 5 Factor Table 3.
loadings Model measurement

assess the convergent validity of this model (Hair et al., 2016). Scholars agree that values of CR
and AVE (each construct) should be > 0.7 and > 0.5, respectively. Table 3 confirms that all
values of CR and AVE in this study remain within the set boundaries. The factor loadings of
all items at the individual level are also higher than 0.7 except for I-OEH1, I-OPD1 and OE2.
JOEPP According to Hair et al. (2017), items with a factor loading between 0.4 and 0.7 can only be
9,3 dropped when their elimination causes composite reliability and convergent validity to rise
above the approved minimum. If composite reliability and convergent validity are higher than
the required minimum, there is no need to drop the items with factor loadings of >0.4 and < 0.7.
The Heterotrait-Monotrait (HTMT) ratio of the correlations method was used to establish
discriminant validity; this method has recently been deemed a superior way of assessing
discriminant validity compared to the traditional Fornell–Larcker method; the maximum
434 threshold for this ratio is 0.85 (Henseler et al., 2015), but values up to 0.90 are acceptable (Hair
et al., 2016). Table 4 demonstrates the HTMT ratio results, which show that all the employed
measures had a value of less than 0.9, confirming discriminant validity.
The values of variance inflation factor (VIF) in this study were observed to verify the
model’s collinearity issues. Generally, if the inner VIF values are <5, it means there are no
collinearity issues in the data (Hair et al., 2014). The robustness of the model in this study is
confirmed since the inner VIF values of constructs are between 1 and 1.951, translating to no
collinearity issue in the data (refer to Table 5). The f2 effect size of variables in the present
study is at medium and higher levels, confirming the model’s strength (Hair et al., 2016).
Predictive accuracy is measured by R2 values (Hair et al., 2016) and is used to describe the
combined effect that exogenous latent variables have on each exogenous variable. As shown
in Figure 4, 99.9, 16.7, and 62.1% of variances in I-OKH, OE and TI, respectively, are
explained (Figure 4). A final indication of the significance of this model is that Q2 values
(cross-validated redundancy) (Hair et al., 2016) of all three latent variables are higher than
zero (I-OKH 5 0.395, OE 5 0.088, TI 5 0.387).

Common method bias

One of the potential threats in cross-sectional studies is common method bias (CMB)
(Podsakoff et al., 2003), where data are collected from a single source using the same method.
Harman’s single-factor test (1976) was used to check the effect of CMB on the study’s findings.
The first factor revealed through an unrotated exploratory factor analysis explained 29.6%

Construct I-OEH OE I-OPD I-ORH TI

I-OEH
OE 0.431
I-OPD 0.83 0.565
I-ORH 0.644 0.227 0.454
Table 4. TI 0.516 0.888 0.686 0.272
Heterotrait-Monotrait Note(s): I-OEH 5 intra-organizational evasive hiding, I-OPD 5 intra-organizational playing dumb,
(HTMT) ratios I-ORH 5 intra-organizational rationalized hiding, OE 5 organizational embeddedness, TI 5 turnover intention

Construct I-OKH I-OEH I-OPD I-ORH OE TI

I-OKH 1.000 1.201

I-OEH 1.951
I-OPD 1.613
I-ORH 1.451
OE 1.201
Table 5. TI
Collinearity of Note(s): I-OKH 5 intra-organizational knowledge hiding, I-OEH 5 intra-organizational evasive hiding,
structural model I-OPD 5 intra-organizational playing dumb, I-ORH 5intra-organizational rationalized hiding, OE 5
(inner VIFs) organizational embeddedness, TI 5 turnover intention
of variance, well within the tolerable limit of 50%. Therefore, common method variance A case study of
(CMV) is not a significant threat. knowledge
workers of
Hypotheses analysis IRIB
We tested hypotheses H1, H2, H3, H4 in the structural model using a bootstrapping approach
and 5,000 samples with replacement to calculate the level of significance (Hair et al., 2016).
Table 6 indicates that I-OKH has a significant and positive (total) effect on TI (path 435
coefficient 5
0.225, p < 0.001); thus, H1 is accepted. The result also shows OE has a
significant and negative effect on TI (path coefficient 5
0.669, p < 0.001), and I-OKH has a
significant and negative effect on OE (path coefficient 5
0.409, p < 0.001); thus, H2 and H3
are also accepted. H4, regarding the indirect effect of I-OKH on TI via OE, is also accepted by
the result (path coefficient 5 0.273, p < 0.001).

Discussion
There have been limited studies on KH in the Iran context. For example, Jafari-Sadeghi et al.
(2022) investigated the determinants of KH in entrepreneurial organizations. Labafi et al.
(2021), examined KH drivers in IT-enabled services of Iran. However, to the best of our
knowledge, no study in Iran has examined the negative outcomes of KH behaviors among
media employees as creative and knowledge workers.
This study’s objective has been to expand on the prior understanding of KH by examining the
consequences of intra-organizational KH for knowledge workers, particularly in the IRIB.
Furthermore, we examined the direct and indirect relationships (via OE) between I-OKH and TI.
The PLS-SEM-based results of the study provide full support for all the hypotheses. More
specifically, in providing support for H1, the results show that I-OKH can further employees’
turnover intentions, consistent with Serenko and Bontis’s (2016) view. The results for H3 and H2
indicate that KH behaviors lower organizational embeddedness, which then enhances turnover
intention.
These findings in Iran corroborate the previous findings on the importance of
organizational embeddedness in explaining turnover (Jiang et al., 2012). In addition, these
confirm the results of studies that somehow point to the damage of employees’ organizational
embeddedness components by KH behaviors. Weakening employees relationships (Anand
et al., 2020), increasing employees isolation and loneliness (Garg and Anand. 2020), and
reducing learning and performance (Connelly et al., 2019), which makes a person think of
leaving the organization without worrying about the cost of material and psychological
benefits, are some examples of these findings. Lastly, the results for H4 show that I-OKH
increases the employees’ intentions to leave via organizational embeddedness. This finding

Hypotheses Coefficients Mean SD T-value BC-Cis Result

H1: I-OKH → TI Supported

Total effect 0.498*** 0.501 0.055 9.129 0.377 and 0.593
Direct effect 0.225*** 0.226 0.051 4.438 0.121 and 0.323
H2: OE→ TI
0.669***
0.669 0.045 14.974
0.751 and
0.575 Supported
H3: I-OKH → OE
0.409***
0.412 0.069 5.892
0.535 and
0.258 Supported
H4: I-OKH → OE→ TI 0.273*** 0.275 0.049 5.615 0.177 and 0.370 Supported
Note(s): N 5 276. *<0.05; **<0.01; ***<0.001
BCs-Cis bias-corrected confidence intervals Table 6.
I-OEH 5 intra-organizational evasive hiding, I-OPD 5 intra-organizational playing dumb, I-ORH 5 intra- Hypothesized
organizational rationalized hiding, OE 5 organizational embeddedness, TI 5 turnover intention structural model
JOEPP suggests that extensive KH behaviors can harm all three dimensions of employees
9,3 “organizational embeddedness (fit, links and sacrifice) and ultimately increase employees”
willingness to leave the organization. This aligns with the results of studies of Garg and
Anand (2020), Connelly et al. (2012) and Serenko and Bontis (2016).
Factors influencing these relationships may be related to the characteristics of working in
news agencies and Iranian culture. Working in these organizations requires a lot of interaction
between employees and exchanging ideas. In addition, the high workload and high working
436 time may increase the expectation of employees to have a suitable working space. Therefore
they do not tolerate behaviors that are against their expectations. Furthermore, Iranians place
more importance on their feelings and emotions than logic, and if they observe KH behaviors,
they may show more emotional behaviors. In either case, if there is a KH environment, it may
reduce the employee’s job embeddedness and lead to a higher likelihood of wishing to leave.
The present study has several theoretical implications. First, studies in the field of KH
have looked at the topic from either the knowledge hider’s or the knowledge seeker’s
perspective. For example, Offergelt et al. (2019) has analyzed turnover intentions of
knowledge hiders based on sanctions imposed on them by their organization or coworkers for
engaging in evasive hiding or playing dumb. Buttt (2020) has analyzed the same topic by
centering the argument that employees who are victimized in the KH process might decide to
leave the organization because they are frequently unable to get answers to their questions.
This study, however, has focused on the consequences of I-OKH (I-OEH, I-OPD, and I-ORH)
and aimed at studying the organizational environment for KH (a third-person point of view)
instead of secondary behaviors of knowledge hiders or their victims.
Second, many studies have attempted to explore the consequences of KH. Chen et al. (2020)
and Rhee and Choi (2017), for example, found that KH causes lower creativity levels in


employees. Arain et al. (2020a) and Cerne et al. (2014) argue that KH can decrease interpersonal


trust, and also Cerne et al. (2017) showed that KH decreases employees’ performance levels.
However, scholars have requested more research on the negative consequences of KH on all of
an organization’s employees (Connelly et al., 2019; Serenko and Bontis, 2016). In addition to
answering the call for further research, this study has analyzed the capacity of organizational
embeddedness components (fit, links and sacrifice) to engage with KH for the first time. It has
been determined that the more an organization’s environment moves towards KH instead of
knowledge sharing, the more will organizational fit, organizational links, organizational
sacrifice, and in turn, employee turnover intentions decrease.
Third, this study has added to the literature of organizational embeddedness by
determining that one of the factors that influences organizational embeddedness and
increases employees’ willingness to leave the organization is I-OKH.
Finally, this result ascertains the theoretical generalizability of studies on KH,
organizational embeddedness and employee turnover beyond the Anglo-American-
European world.
This study’s results have significant and helpful practical implications for managers in
understanding the negative consequences of I-OKH in organizations, especially in
organizations with knowledge workers. First, the results of this study remind managers of
these organizations that the existence of a knowledge-hiding environment among employees
who are in great need of knowledge sharing to grow intellectually can cause a decrease of
organizational fit, damage to or destruction of organizational links and decrease of
organizational sacrifice; this, in turn, can cause an increase in employee turnover intentions.
This is while weaker organizational embeddedness can have other negative consequences as
well. For example, organizational embeddedness is significantly related to organizational
citizenship, work performance and job satisfaction (Lee et al., 2004). Knowledge of this topic,
therefore, can be significant for managers of these organizations since they will be able to
prevent numerous problems and negative consequences of weakened organizational A case study of
embeddedness of employees. knowledge
Second, keeping knowledge workers is one of the most important organizational
priorities and losing these employees is one of the greatest damages an organization can
workers of
suffer from. In addition to organizational ties that are hurt, employees who enter a IRIB
knowledge-hiding environment will perceive the environment as harmful to their growth
and learning, which causes them to feel the least amount of loss when leaving the
organization. This leads to a loss of human capital and imposition of direct and indirect 437
costs upon the organization. Therefore, the results of this study can demonstrate the
significance of having knowledge of and controlling the knowledge-hiding environment of
organizations for their managers.
This study shows the negative outcomes of I-OKH can be a wake-up call for managers to
familiarize themselves with factors that lead to the creation of this counterproductive work.
Studies show that antecedents of KH are not limited to factors related to knowledge (like
knowledge complexity (Yuan et al., 2020) or perceived knowledge value (Huo et al., 2016)),
attitudes (like psychological entitlement (Alnaimi and Rjoub, 2019) or transactional
psychological contract (Pan et al., 2018)), personality traits and behavioral characteristics
(like neuroticism (Iqbal et al., 2020) or narcissism (Pan et al., 2018)), or relationships among the
employees (like knowledge seeker’s learning ability (Labafi, 2017; Labafi et al., 2021) or
interpersonal distrust (Yuan et al., 2020)), but also include factors related to leadership style,
the dominant culture of the organization, supervisor and job position. Self-serving leadership
(Peng et al., 2019) and exploitative leadership (Guo et al., 2020) in terms of leadership factors,
workplace incivility (Aljawarneh and Atan, 2018) and competitive psychological climate (Han
et al., 2020) in terms of factors related to the organizational culture, supervisor restrictions
(Butt and Ahmad, 2019) and upward leader-member exchange social comparison (Weng et al.,
2020) in terms of factors related to supervisor, and burnout (Ali et al., 2020) or job engagement
(Wang et al., 2019a) in terms of job-related factors are some of the factors that lead to KH
behaviors. Managers, therefore, must have a broad perspective on antecedents of KH to be
able to prepare the workplace environment for the decrease of this behavior through
regulation of relevant factors.
In recent years, Iran has faced many economic problems. This has made it difficult for
people to leave their jobs because they may not find a better position than their current one.
However, many employees decide to leave their jobs, so that it can be said that the turnover
rate in Iran is high (Karatepe and Shahriari, 2014). For example, according to the Human
Resources Department of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), around one
employee leaves their job every month. This study’s results can help managers better
understand the consequences of KH.
This study showed that the less suitable the organizational environment for knowledge
sharing, the higher tendency to leave the organization. This becomes even more important
when we see this issue in media organizations, especially news agencies in which creating
and sharing idea are needed. Therefore, the managers of these organizations must
constantly control the organization’s environment and take appropriate measures to
facilitate the conditions for knowledge sharing. For example, managers must clearly
inform employees about the destructive consequences of I-OKH. Employees need to be
trained to deal with this counterproductive behavior and to report it in some cases. They
should be taught to take positive actions to compensate for their inappropriate behavior,
such as their unwillingness to answer the questions for reasons like time pressure or
confidentiality, preventing knowledge seekers not to feel separated from other employees
or even from the organization. Managers also need to handle the organizational
environment in such a way that individuals are enthusiastic about sharing knowledge
rather than waiting to be asked.
JOEPP Conclusion
9,3 This study has aimed to answer three key questions. First, how does I-OKH influence employee
turnover intention? Second, does I-OKH affect organizational embeddedness? And third, is I-
OKH related to turnover intention through organizational embeddedness? Results demonstrate
that I-OKH has a significant and negative relationship with organizational embeddedness and,
in turn, leads to an increase in employee turnover intentions. This study’s theoretical
implications highlight the significance of negative consequences of I-OKH in organizations that
438 hire knowledge workers and explain the relationship between I-OKH and employees’
organizational embeddedness. In terms of managerial implications, these results provide
recommendations for human resources administrators in organizations to become aware of the
existence of a knowledge-hiding environment among the organization’s employees and prevent
its creation, as well as becoming aware of the negative consequences of KH such as reduced
organizational embeddedness and, eventually, higher turnover intentions.

Future research
Most studies on the consequences of KH have looked at it as a whole (Arain et al., 2020b; Butt,
2020; Jiang et al., 2019; Li et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2019b; Zhu et al., 2019). Offergelt et al. (2019)
and studies like (Burmeister et al., 2019; Khoreva and Wechtler, 2020) have focused on the
consequences of all types of KH, while according to Connelly and Zweig (2015), people can
engage in three different forms of KH when asked a question. The first type is evasive hiding,
which has the greatest deceptive factor to it, pointing to situations where people mislead their
coworkers while aware of giving them incorrect information (Connelly et al., 2012). In this
type of KH, evasive hiders not only neglect the benefit of the knowledge seeker, but also hurt
the inter-personal relationship and create distrust by answering incorrectly and misleading
their coworkers, which leads the victims to seek revenge in future (Serenko and Bontis, 2016).
In addition, Connelly and Zweig (2015) found that evasive hiding both harms the relationship
from targets’ perspectives and leads to withholding of knowledge by the target in future. On
the same grounds, Offergelt et al. (2019) show that evasive hiding and playing dumb cause a
decrease in job satisfaction and an increase in employee turnover intentions while such effect
is not concluded for rationalized hiding.
The second is playing dumb, where knowledge hider pretends not to know the answer to a
question and is in the second place in terms of its deceptive element; in many studies, playing
dumb has had the same effects as evasive hiding.
The third is rationalized hiding and has the least amount of deception; the person engaging
in rationalized hiding offers justifications for not answering the questions, which makes this
kind of hiding the least harmful for the perpetrator-target relationship (Labafi et al., 2017). For
example, when an employee asks a coworker about the minutes of a meeting and the coworker
refuses to share the information while explaining their confidentiality, deception is at its lowest
since the knowledge hider does not withhold knowledge for personal gain, but for shared
interests with the seeker and the organization. Rationalized hiding can even lead to coworkers
coming to know the knowledge hider as a responsible person (Connelly and Zweig, 2015).
Offergelt’s (2019) study shows that rationalized hiding does not have a negative effect on job
satisfaction or a positive effect on turnover intentions, but in fact, has a positive effect on
empowerment. According to Connelly and Zweig (2015), people who engage in rationalized
hiding do not harm their relationship with the target, and even improve it. In the study carried
out by Bari et al. (2019), too, there has been no negative effect of rationalized hiding on group
creativity recorded while evasive hiding and playing dumb do negatively affect team creativity.
Khoreva and Wechtler (2020) argue that rationalized hiding does not undermine innovative
performance and even enhances it. The study by Burmeister et al. (2019) shows that rationalized
hiding does not affect feelings of shame and guilt, while playing dumb does have a meaningful
effect on them. Researchers can clarify this phenomenon’s complex nature and help enrich the A case study of
literature in this field by doing a detailed analysis of the effects of different types of KH on OE knowledge
and TI in future research.
This paper has also studied the mediation role of organizational embeddedness in the
workers of
relationship between I-OKH and TI; future research can explore other mediation mechanisms. IRIB
Different variables such as a knowledge sharing climate can work as moderating variables in
the relationship between I-OKH and OE.
There may be policies in organizations that legitimize knowledge hiding behaviors. In this 439
case, not only is knowledge hiding not considered an inappropriate action but it is accepted
by all employees as an approved organizational policy. Therefore, one of the factors that
could be considered in future research is to examine the organizational policies that normalize
these counterproductive behaviors.
We also call for more research to explore the antecedents and consequences of I-OKH in
media organizations as a knowledge-intensive industry.
Finally, researchers can explore the effects of gender, age, education level and other
demographic information on the hypotheses in future work (see Table A2).

Limitations
First, Due to the collection of data from Iranian knowledge workers, it is possible that the
generalizability of the results is contaminated. Therefore, other interesting results can be
yielded by testing this model in a variety of organizational and cultural contexts.
Second, accessing journalists and news producers is hard and makes the survey
distribution process difficult. These and other hardships, such as sensitivities around
controlled access to news agencies, led to a sample size of 276 responses for the present study.
This model can be tested more comprehensively in future with a larger dataset.
Third, we measured all variables from the same participant, which inevitably leads to
Common method bias. Although this study found that CMB would not be a serious threat to
the findings of the research via the Harman single-factor test, and also the novelty of the
problem and the dataset largely over-rides the problem of cross-sectionality, CMB is still an
issue that needs to be addressed (Malhotra et al., 2006).
Forth, the cross-sectional nature of this study limits its ability to make assertive causal
claims. If future studies use longitudinal data or an experimental design to verify the
theoretical framework of this study, they might be able to arrive at stronger causal claims.
Fifth, other data collection methods such as field study or experimental methods could be
used instead of our selected method of surveying to reaffirm this paper’s results.
Finally, although not answering confidential questions is not considered negative, it can
be regarded as one of the limitations of this study. Thus, in future research, it is better to use
only two variables, intra-organizational evasive hiding and playing dumb, to measure the
I-OKH as a counterproductive behavior.

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Appendix
Construct name and resource
Intra-organizational knowledge hiding
(Connelly et al., 2012)
Organizational embeddedness
(Crossley et al., 2007)
Turnover intention (Cammann et al.,
1979)
A case study of
knowledge
workers of
IRIB
Measurement items (5-point scales ranging from “strongly
disagree” to “strongly agree”
In my firm, when asked by a colleague to share knowledge: 447
Intra-organizational evasive hiding:
(1) My colleagues often agree to help him/her but never really
intend to
(2) My colleagues often agree to help him/her but instead give him/
her other information different from what he/she wants
(3) My colleagues often tell him/her that they would help him/her
out later but stall as much as possible
(4) My colleagues often offer him/her some other information
instead of what he/she really wants
Intra-organizational playing dumb
(1) My colleagues often pretend that they do not know the
information
(2) My colleagues often say that they do not know, even though
they do
(3) My colleagues often pretend they do not know what he/she is
talking about
(4) My colleagues often say that they are not very knowledgeable
about the topic
Intra-organizational rationalized hiding:
(1) My colleagues often explain that they would like to tell him/her
but not supposed to
(2) My colleagues often explain that the information is confidential
and only available to people on a particular project
(3) My colleagues often tell him/her that their boss would not let
anyone share this knowledge
(4) My colleagues often say that they would not answer his/her
question
(1) I feel attached to this organization
(2) It would be difficult for me to leave this organization
(3) I am too caught up in this organization to leave
(4) I feel tied to this organization
(5) I simply could not leave the organization that I work for
(6) It would not be easy for me to leave this organization
(7) I am tightly connected to this organization
(1) I often think about leaving this organization
(2) It is very possible that I will look for a new job soon Table A1.
(3) If I may choose again, I will not choose to work for the current Measurement items
organization and resources
JOEPP Measure Items Freq Percent
9,3
Gender Male 162 58.6
Female 114 41.3
Age 20–30 93 33.6
31–40 99 35.8
41–50 55 19.9
448 50þ 29 10.5
Education BA 129 46.7
MA 97 35.1
PhD 50 18.1
Table A2. Jon title News secretary 112 40.5
Respondent’s News officer 94 34.05
demographic Reporter 41 14.8
information Others 29 10.5

Corresponding author
Peyman Akhavan can be contacted at: Akhavan@qut.ac.ir

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