Does Knowledge-Oriented Leadership Moderate the Relationship Between Organizational Structure and Knowledge Hiding?

Abstract

Over the last decade, knowledge hiding has drawn the attention of knowledge management researchers. This organizational phenomenon has several antecedents and outcomes that need to be taken to the academic considerations. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between centralization as an organizational structure and knowledge hiding(KH), and to test the moderating role of knowledge-oriented leadership(KOL). To test this research model, the field data were collected from five Iraqi Kurdistan public universities. The collected data were analyzed by using SPSS to conduct several statistical tests such as correlation, regression and moderation tests. The findings of this study showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between centralization and knowledge hiding, they also showed that the knowledge-oriented leadership style moderates the relationship between centralization and knowledge hiding, in a way that the higher the level of knowledge-oriented leadership style the less knowledge hiding will happen. This paper is expected to contribute in enriching the existing theories as it has been carried out in an unexplored research setting of Iraqi Kurdistan. It also provides some practical implications for the top management level in higher education institutions that public universities in Kurdistan can follow the findings and implement the recommendations.