When does knowledge hiding hinder employees’ job performance? The roles of emotional exhaustion and emotional intelligence

As an emerging novelty, knowledge hiding has received considerable attention in management literature. Extending this research stream, we draw from conservation of resources (COR) theory and social information processing (SIP) theory to investigate the mediating role of emotional exhaustion between employees’ exposure to knowledge hiding and their job performance. Moreover, we examine the buffering role of emotional intelligence, investigating whether employees with higher emotional intelligence can mitigate the harmful effects of resource-depleting episodes of knowledge hiding. The study employed paper-and-pencil surveys to collect multi-source, time-lagged data from 319 employees and their respective supervisors in various service sector organisations. The findings indicate that persistent exposure to knowledge hiding diminishes employees’ job performance through emotional exhaustion. However, this negative relationship is less salient for employees with higher levels of emotional intelligence. This study informs important insights for organisations on why and when employees’ experiences of knowledge hiding curtail their performance-enhancing efforts.