Linking leaders’ knowledge-hiding and employees’ work engagement: the moderating role of organisational citizenship behaviour

Purpose Work engagement has been shown to be one of the most significant positive employee outcomes in organisations and a critical factor in overall business success. The effect of leadership behaviour on employee work engagement has also been established as one of the most critical interactions in the literature. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the impact of a leader’s knowledge-hiding behaviour on employee work engagement. Moreover, this study examines how organisational citizenship behaviour moderates the relationship. Design/methodology/approach This study adopted a quantitative method with 289 front-line employees from Jordan’s banking sector, each of whom was asked to complete an online self-report questionnaire. Findings The findings of this study indicate that leaders’ knowledge-hiding negatively affects the three dimensions of employee work engagement (namely, physical, emotional and cognitive). Additionally, the findings provide evidence for the negative moderating effect of organisational citizenship behaviour on the direct relationship between leaders’ knowledge-hiding behaviour and three employee work engagement dimensions. Originality/value This study adds to the body of literature by proposing and empirically demonstrating the impact of leaders’ knowledge-hiding behaviours on all three dimensions of employee work engagement. Furthermore, this study adds to the knowledge-hiding phenomenon and work engagement literature by proposing the mitigation role of organisational citizenship behaviour on the negative relation between leaders’ knowledge-hiding behaviour and employees’ employee work engagement.