Counteracting knowledge hiding among academics to foster creativity: is organisational support the silver bullet or fools’ gold?

Purpose Knowledge hiding has become one of the main inhibitors to the generation of new research ideas and solutions for the university context. Organisational support has been proven effective in reducing knowledge hiding within corporate settings. Nevertheless, recent evidence emerging from academic studies undervalues its ability to address this issue in university contexts. This paper believes further investigation is needed to produce more conclusive findings. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the positive indirect effect of organisational support on creativity by reducing the three types of knowledge hiding: evasive hiding, playing dumb and rationalised hiding. Design/methodology/approach The research model was tested with survey data from a sample of research groups from public and private universities in an emerging country. Findings The findings suggest that organisational support has a positive indirect effect on creativity by reducing two of the three types of knowledge hiding (evasive hiding and playing dumb). Research limitations/implications The findings cannot be extrapolated to the knowledge hiding that occurs during knowledge transfer. Originality/value The work challenges current evidence that disregards the significance of organisational support in reducing knowledge hiding among academics and reveals that organisational support is essential for addressing the difficulties that result from economic incentive conflicts associated with evasive hiding and playing dumb. Furthermore, effective organisational support is needed to promote a culture of knowledge sharing to gain more respect, recognition and prestige. This support also reduces the harmful practice of rationalised hiding, which is often used both as an ego-defensive mechanism and to maintain positions of academic superiority.