Gossip is a fearful thing: the impact of negative workplace gossip on knowledge hiding

The crucial role of knowledge sharing in an organization has become even more crucial lately, resulting in garnering more attention by scholars. In reality, while several organizations expect their employees to share knowledge with colleagues actively, many choose to hide their knowledge when asked for help. This study aims to explore whether negative workplace gossip (NWG) affects employee knowledge hiding (KH), as well as analyzes whether relational identification (RI) and interpersonal trust (IT) play a chain mediating role between the two, and discusses whether forgiveness climate (FC) could be used as a boundary condition in the relationships mentioned above.

Based on the conservation of resource (COR) theory and the cognitive–affective personality system (CAPS) theory, the authors surveyed 326 employees in China at 2 time-points and explored the correlation between NWG and KH, as well as the underlying mechanism. Using confirmatory factor analysis, bootstrapping method and structural equation model, the authors validated the research hypotheses.

The findings revealed the following: NWG negatively correlates with KH; RI and IT play a mediation role between NWG and KH, respectively, and both variables also play a chain mediation role in the relationship mentioned above; and FC moderates the negative impact of NWG on RI, further moderating the chain mediation between RI and IT and between NWG and KH.

First, this study established the correlation between NWG and KH, as well as analyzed the internal mechanism between the two. Besides, this study adds to scholars’ understanding of the underlying mechanisms by which these effects could occur. Second, this study demonstrated the moderating effect of FC – a situational feature that has been neglected in previous studies. Furthermore, this study can not only complement the situational factors ignored in previous studies but also broaden the application scope of CAPS. Finally, this study effectively combines COR and CAPS, which provides a basis for the application of these two theories in the future.