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Linking proactive and reactive helping behaviour to knowledge hiding: the moral licencing perspective from China
Abstract: Most study on employee knowledge hiding has studied its antecedents from a “victim-centric” perspective, with little emphasis paid to a “actor-centric” approach. Helping behavior, a typical extra-role good behavior, is unknown whether, when, and how it prompts actors to hide information. Employees' earlier positive activities may generate their own counterproductive work behaviors. This study examines the psychological cognitive factors that cause employees to behave badly based on moral balance and self-regulation, according to moral licensing theory. The results of a multi-wave survey show that: (1) Proactive and reactive helping can induce psychological entitlement. Proactive and reactive helping indirectly affect evasive hiding and playing dumb through psychological entitlement, but rationalized hiding is insignificant. (3) Reactive helping induces moral licensing more than proactive helping, and has a stronger effect on evasive hiding and playing dumb through the mediating role of psychological entitlement. (4) Moral ownership negatively moderates the link between proactive and reactive helping and psychological entitlement and the mediating effect of psychological entitlement. This study gives an important theoretical explanation for the ongoing behavioral transition of “good to bad” in the workplace and allows managers design and improve accountability techniques for helping behavior and knowledge hiding.