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Knowledge withholding in online knowledge spaces: Social deviance behavior and secondary control perspective
Author(s) -
Shen XiaoLiang,
Li YangJun,
Sun Yongqiang,
Chen Jun,
Wang Feng
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of the association for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.903
H-Index - 145
eISSN - 2330-1643
pISSN - 2330-1635
DOI - 10.1002/asi.24192
Subject(s) - deviance (statistics) , procedural knowledge , knowledge management , psychology , knowledge value chain , control (management) , social control , social psychology , perspective (graphical) , body of knowledge , knowledge sharing , empirical research , computer science , sociology , organizational learning , epistemology , social science , machine learning , artificial intelligence , philosophy
Knowledge withholding, which is defined as the likelihood that an individual devotes less than full effort to knowledge contribution, can be regarded as an emerging social deviance behavior for knowledge practice in online knowledge spaces. However, prior studies placed a great emphasis on proactive knowledge behaviors, such as knowledge sharing and contribution, but failed to consider the uniqueness of knowledge withholding. To capture the social‐deviant nature of knowledge withholding and to better understand how people deal with counterproductive knowledge behaviors, this study develops a research model based on the secondary control perspective. Empirical analyses were conducted using the data collected from an online knowledge space. The results indicate that both predictive control and vicarious control exert a positive influence on knowledge withholding. This study also incorporates knowledge‐withholding acceptability as a moderating variable of secondary control strategies. In particular, knowledge‐withholding acceptability enhances the impact of predictive control, whereas it weakens the effect of vicarious control on knowledge withholding. This study concludes with a discussion of the key findings, and the implications for both research and practice.