The Impact of Perceived Corporate Social Responsibility on Employee Knowledge Hiding: The Mediating Role of Organizational Identification and the Moderating Role of Moral Identity

Based on social identity theory, this study explores whether employees’ perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) affects their knowledge hiding behavior and examines the mediating effect of organizational identification and the moderating influence of moral identity. A cross-industry survey was conducted on 245 workers in China. Data analysis was performed using SPSS for descriptive and inferential statistics, including hypothesis testing via the PROCESS macro, while AMOS was employed for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The results indicate the following- (1) Perceived CSR is strongly and negatively associated with knowledge hiding behavior; (2) Organizational identification partially mediates this relationship; that is, higher perceived CSR is related to a stronger sense of organizational identification and a lower tendency to withhold information. (3) Moral identity significantly moderates the relationship between perceived CSR and organizational identification- people with higher Moral Identity show a stronger positive association with perceived CSR. In summary, from this set of research results, we find that there are multiple means by which CSR can promote the dissemination of scientific knowledge. At the same time, these findings offer some new theories and resources for companies’ efforts to build an open knowledge ecosystem based on CSR activities.