From Harmful Acts to Helping Hands: When and How Employee Deceptive Knowledge Hiding Promotes Workplace Helping Behavior

Abstract

This research examines the morally compensatory behavioral consequence, wherein employees engage in subsequent helping behavior to repair prior deceptive knowledge hiding. Grounded in moral cleansing theory, we propose and validate a parallel path mediation model that accounts for emotional (self-conscious moral emotions) and cognitive (moral self-regulation) processes. Through a multimethod design combining a vignette experiment (Study 1) with a two-wave field survey involving 181 employee-coworker dyads (Study 2), we find that, first, deceptive knowledge hiding triggers morally compensatory helping behavior, demonstrating the behavioral transformation of this implicitly immoral behavior; second, guilt experience (an emotional mechanism) and perceived loss of moral credits (a cognitive mechanism) mediate the deceptive knowledge hiding–helping behavior relationship; and third, reflective moral attentiveness amplifies the effects of deceptive knowledge hiding on both those mediators and the indirect effects of deceptive knowledge hiding on helping behavior through those mediators, establishing this individual moral trait as a boundary condition. Our research enriches the knowledge management literature by uncovering the moral compensation processes that follow deceptive knowledge hiding. It also highlights implications for managing posttransgression behaviors in organizations.