Job autonomy and knowledge hiding: the moderating roles of leader reward omission and person–supervisor fit

In this paper, the moderating roles of leader reward omission and person–supervisor fit in the relationship between job autonomy and knowledge hiding are investigated.,Using a sample of 248 employees in a two-wave survey, we performed a hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses.,The results revealed that employees with high job autonomy were less likely to engage in knowledge hiding. Moreover, when employees experienced leader reward omission, the negative relationship between job autonomy and knowledge hiding was weakened, and this interesting effect varied by person–supervisor fit.,This study does not explore the mediating mechanism by which job autonomy affects employee knowledge hiding. Moreover, as this research was conducted in a Chinese context, the generalizability of our findings is unclear.,This research has fulfilled its practical aims by providing advice on knowledge-relevant job characteristic factors that can be used to stage interventions regarding the provision of autonomy in jobs, and by carefully considering how to create interdependence between jobs without pushing people to engage in knowledge-hiding behaviors. Furthermore, it is important for leaders to help employees identify work goals and directions and not engage in reward omission.,This study contributes to theoretical advancements in the field of knowledge hiding by revealing boundary conditions that mitigate or enhance the impact of job autonomy on knowledge hiding.