Bridging the Breach: Using Positive Affectivity to Overcome Knowledge Hiding after Contract Breaches

Area of Science:

• Organizational Behavior
• Psychology
• Human Resource Management

Background:

• Conservation of Resources Theory provides a framework for understanding employee responses to workplace stressors.
• Psychological contract breaches are significant workplace stressors impacting employee attitudes and behaviors.
• Knowledge hiding and positive affectivity are crucial individual-level factors influencing job performance.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the relationship between perceived psychological contract breaches and job performance.
• To investigate the mediating role of knowledge hiding in this relationship.
• To explore the moderating effect of positive affectivity on the link between psychological contract breaches, knowledge hiding, and job performance.

Main Methods:

• Multisource, three-wave data collection from employees and their peers in Pakistani organizations.
• Quantitative analysis using statistical modeling to test mediation and moderation hypotheses.
• Utilized established scales to measure psychological contract breaches, knowledge hiding, positive affectivity, and job performance.

Main Results:

• Perceived psychological contract breaches were found to negatively impact job performance.
• Knowledge hiding significantly mediated the relationship between psychological contract breaches and job performance.
• Positive affectivity moderated the mediating effect, weakening the negative impact of contract breaches on performance via knowledge hiding.

Conclusions:

• Organizations must address psychological contract breaches to prevent detrimental effects on job performance.
• Mitigating knowledge hiding is crucial, as it exacerbates the negative consequences of contract breaches.
• Fostering positive affectivity among employees can serve as a protective mechanism against the adverse outcomes of unfulfilled organizational promises.