This research aims to address the research question of how knowledge hiding occurs from an ethical lens. Drawing on an integrated ethical decision-making model, we identified job content plateau as an important personally threatening situation that predicts knowledge hiding. We also proposed that attribution of blame—a specific mechanism of moral disengagement—explains how employees experiencing a high job content plateau bypass their moral self-regulation to engage in knowledge hiding. More specifically, employees can cognitively reconstruct themselves as faultless victims who are driven to hide their knowledge because they perceive: (a) their colleagues cannot be trusted; and (b) the knowledge-exchange process in the organization is exploitative. We tested this dual-path mediation model using time-lagged data collected from 301 working adults across three time points. The results supported the mediating roles of perceived distrust in colleagues and perceived exploitation in the organization's knowledge-exchange process, opening the door for future research to better understand knowledge hiding from a moral perspective.

本研究旨在从道德角度解决知识隐藏如何发生的研究问题。利用综合道德决策模型，我们将工作内容高原视为一种重要的个人威胁情况，预示着知识隐藏。我们还提出，归咎——一种特定的道德脱离机制——解释了经历高工作内容高原的员工如何绕过道德自我调节而进行知识隐藏。更具体地说，员工可以在认知上将自己重建为完美的受害者，他们被迫隐藏自己的知识，因为他们认为：（a）他们的同事不值得信任；(b) 组织内的知识交流过程是剥削性的。我们使用从三个时间点的 301 名工作成年人收集的时间滞后数据来测试这种双路径中介模型。结果支持了同事之间的不信任感和组织知识交换过程中的剥削感的中介作用，为未来的研究打开了大门，以便从道德角度更好地理解隐藏的知识。