Employee Withdrawal and its Potential Link With Knowledge Risks

This conceptual paper aims to identify and present the potential impact of employee withdrawal on knowledge risks in organizations. Employee withdrawal is a subtype of counterproductive work behaviour and a critical issue for organisations. Employees who are no longer committed to their organizations may engage in various types of withdrawal behaviours. Employee withdrawal may begin with small actions like being late, or daydreaming, but they might culminate in more serious and significant behaviours like absenteeism, missing meetings, or quitting that can be detrimental to the organization. Since a large proportion of organizational knowledge is personalized and resides in individuals’ heads researching employee withdrawal behaviours is particularly critical in the context of knowledge risks. Employee withdrawal in the context of knowledge management has begun to be examined only recently. To the best knowledge of the authors, there are no publications that describe the link between employee withdrawal behaviours and various knowledge risks. To fill this gap, the authors of this paper have analysed the literature both on withdrawal behaviours and knowledge risks and created a matrix that illustrates the potential impact of different employee withdrawal behaviours on various knowledge risks in an organization. This study is based on the analysis of the literature related to employee withdrawal and knowledge risks. The paper lays the ground for a better understanding of knowledge risks and their relation with employee withdrawal, and provides food for thought for managers and owners on how the withdrawal behaviours of their employees might potentially generate various knowledge risks in their workplace.