Subterfuge at the Station: Understanding Knowledge Hiding within Organizations

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the conditions that give rise to knowledge hiding within organizations. Building on existing, largely quantitative work, the aim of this study was to examine the role played by trust in knowledge hiding, because trust plays a key role in exchange relationships. In building a dataset of 106 interviews from two policing organizations, including interviews with both police officers and police staff, we arrive at three contributions to knowledge. First we argue that competitive organizational contexts provoke knowledge hiding due to the fear that one’s good ideas may be co-opted by others, second we argue that trust disintegrates when there is a perceived lack of fairness within an organization, and third we argue that decisions to share or hide knowledge are made instrumentally in a competitive context depending on how individuals perceive the benefits and/or risks to themselves.