Can knowledge hiding promote creativity among IT professionals

Purpose Knowledge sharing is believed to enhance creativity; however, the purpose of this study is to find out how and when knowledge hiding perception of target affects creativity of IT professionals. Design/methodology/approach Using a temporally segregated survey based data from IT professionals, this study investigates a three-way interplay of knowledge hiding, supervisor support for creativity and creative self-efficacy to examine employee's creativity. Time lagged data were collected from 253 respondents working in IT-based organizations across Pakistan. Findings Findings provide interesting insights revealing that knowledge hiding perception of target enhances target's creativity through the mechanism of benign envy. Another appealing finding is that the three-way interaction effect of supervisor support and creative self-efficacy is found to weaken the effect of knowledge hiding perception on employee creativity. Originality/value This is first of its kind study which is specifically related target's knowledge hiding perception with their own creativity among IT professionals. This study further explores the mechanism of benign envy as a motivational drive through which target's knowledge hiding perception enhances creativity. The cumulative role of conditional factors that affect knowledge hiding perception to creativity link from target's perspective has also been clarified. Most of the studies focus on benefits of knowledge sharing and ignoring the outcomes of knowledge hiding.