关键词: 知识隐藏, 防御定向, 动机氛围, 知识管理, 知识转移

Abstract: Knowledge hiding is the intentional concealment behavior when employees face knowledge request, and it inhibits innovation and weakens organizational performance. Knowledge hiding and knowledge sharing are not completely opposite, and they are two independent concepts. The sharing emphasizes a voluntary behavior and actively shares knowledge. Lack of knowledge sharing may be due to lack of relevant knowledge. Actual observations show that employees may exhibit knowledge sharing and knowledge hiding behavior at the same time. Knowledge hiding has the characteristics of low reporting rate. Individuals who use knowledge hiding are often reluctant to be found by their own hidden intentions, such as workplace infringements. Many incentives that encourage employees to contribute knowledge are adopted, but they do not promote employee knowledge sharing intentions. Employees believe that hidden knowledge is more beneficial than sharing knowledge.The most fundamental motivation for individuals to hide knowledge comes from the protection of their own interests, because loss of knowledge is likely to weaken their competitive advantage. From the perspective of profit-seeking and avoiding harm, this study finds that regulatory focus theory will provide important clues and theoretical support for revealing the essential motivation of knowledge hiding. Regulatory focus theory divides the basic motivations of behavior into two types: one is promotion focus, the pursuit of achievement, to focus on achieving positive results, and the other is prevention focus, to pursue safety, to avoid negative consequences. Different focus can lead to important differences in individual behavior and profit-avoiding choices.Prevention focus employees in the organization are more focused on pursuing security and avoiding losses, so they may carefully control and retain knowledge, trying to maintain their competitive advantage by owning and controlling knowledge information, avoiding risks and maintaining stability. Helping others with knowledge requests is risky and may lose their competitive advantage, so prevention focus employees are more motivated to hide knowledge. Prevention focus has both traits and contextual characteristics, and is regulated by organizational strategies. Therefore, this study uses prevention focus as an important antecedent variable that affects knowledge hiding in organizations.Motivation is to be fermented in a certain atmosphere, and the motivational climate regulates the influence of motivation on behavior. Motivational climate in the workplace is a common view of employees' existing standards of success and failure. The feeling of this kind of climate will help employees understand what kind of behavioris organizational expectations and rewards, including mastery climate and performance climate. Mastery climate is a climate that emphasizes learning, cooperation, and establishes the concept of common destiny of employees. Employees will attach importance to common interests and choose to share their insights and lessons learned, rather than hiding knowledge. In the mastery climate, knowledge hiding behavior may not receive corresponding returns, negative reciprocity is not conducive to group achievement, and employees do not have to worry about the loss of sharing knowledge, even for prevention focus employees, the mastery climate will weaken the impact on knowledge hiding. In the performance climate, social comparison and team competition are valued, and knowledge hiding may give employees a competitive advantage and a chance to win. In order to avoid potential harm, the directional employees are more inclined to maximize their own interests by hiding knowledge. The performance climate strengthens the influence of prevention focus on knowledge hiding. Therefore, the motivational climate was chosen as the adjustment variable of the knowledge hiding in the research.Therefore, the problem that needs to be solved urgently is to find out the reasons for failure of knowledge sharing from the source, and to reveal the motives and main influencing factors of knowledge hiding. In order to solve this problem, this paper takes knowledge hiding in the enterprise as the dependent variable, prevention focus as the independent variable, mastery climate and performance climate as the adjustment variable, and constructs the research model. This paper uses empirical research methods to test hypotheses through large sample analysis and obtain conclusions.The study affirmed the prevention focus can promote the knowledge hiding, and the performance climate can enhance the impact to knowledge hiding by prevention focus. The moderating effect of weak performance climate and strong performance climate change with prevention focus changing. Mastery climate can weaken the effect to knowledge hiding by prevention focus. When the prevention focus is lower, strong mastery climate play a greater moderating role. Weak mastery climate can play more obvious role when the prevention focus is higher. There is a tendency for performance climate and mastery climate to counteract each other. When there are two kinds of motivational climates simultaneously in an organization, their roles will be weakened.This study attempts to explore the reasons for the possible failure of knowledge transfer from the source, revealing the individual motivation and motivational climate of employees' hidden knowledge, which will promote the development of knowledge management and knowledge transfer theory. Most of the existing researches on knowledge transfer and sharing are based on the assumption that knowledge output is effective, and analyze the process, mechanism and influencing factors of knowledge transfer from the output to the input and integration by the inputers. The knowledge output may be reluctant. This study intends to reveal the knowledge hiding motives and their influencing factors in enterprises, subvert the assumptions that are too far-fetched and provide new theoretical ideas so as to link and integrate knowledge management theory and motivation theory and to expand the regulatory focus theory from the individual level to the organizational level. The research conclusions also have practical practicality, which provides theoretical guidance for the organization's design of employee knowledge sharing strategies and methods. The employee defense focus, which is the motivation of knowledge hiding individual, is regulated by organizational strategy. The research conclusions will also provide theoretical support for the organization to regulate employee motivation and foster mastery atmosphere. Based on the research, some meaningful follow-up studies can be carried out, which can further summarize the stimulating factors of situational promotion focus and prevention focus, as well as the process and mechanism of the influence of these factors on situational regulatory focus.

Key words: knowledge hiding, prevention focus, motivational climate, knowledge management, knowledge transfer