A phenomenological study of the antecedents of knowledge hoarding by knowledge workers

Purpose: Refusing to share knowledge with other stakeholders in a conscious and intentional manner will limit the sharing and access to knowledge and will result in damages such as reducing organizational performance and competitiveness. Identifying and managing factors affecting the emergence of this behavioral tendency among employees is necessary to manage this behavioral complication incompatible with the goals of knowledge management in the organization. The current research aims to study the lived experience of a group of technical experts in order to understand the antecedents of knowledge hoarding..

Method: This research is qualitative and inductive. The participants of the research include the technical experts of the Air Force of the Islamic Republic of Iran, among whom 16 people were selected by the purposeful sampling method to conduct an interview using a semi-structured interview. Descriptive phenomenological method (Colaise systematic approach) was also used for data analysis. In order to ensure the validity of the obtained results, it has been used to frame the previous knowledge of the researcher, refer again to the participants and get their agreement.

Findings: The findings of the research showed that behavioral, structural and contextual factors were effective in creating and strengthening the tendency to this behavior: a) Behavioral factors include tendencies and interests, concerns and worries, motivations, personal traits and communication factors. Tendencies such as the desire to keep the organization dependent on itself in order to maintain and continue serving in the organization and the desire to be outstanding, stand out and stand out in the organization are effective in this field. Also, the fear of losing power, position and job security as a result of sharing knowledge also causes the desire to hoard knowledge. Individual characteristics such as miserliness, utilitarianism, opportunism and conservatism can also have an impact on the degree of people's desire to hoard their valuable knowledge. In addition, the lack of effective interaction, the difference in intellectual tendencies between different generations of employees in the work environment, weakness in communication skills, the reluctance to ask questions of the unknown by employees and the difference in the level of knowledge between the recipient and the possessor of knowledge are another factors of hoarding behaviors. is knowledge; b) Structural factors include occupational, managerial and infrastructural factors. Job factors such as excessive workload, job stress and frustration, and job dissatisfaction become the basis of a person's tendency to hoard knowledge. In addition to these management factors such as directive and non-supportive style, managers' inattention to encouraging people to share knowledge and managers' insufficient efforts to create conditions conducive to knowledge sharing among employees are also effective in this field. In addition, infrastructural factors such as the weakness of existing laws regarding knowledge sharing and the lack of technical and system infrastructure for recording and sharing knowledge are also effective in the occurrence of this behavior. c) Background factors include organizational culture, social factors and economic factors. The existence of a competitive and individualistic organizational culture in which interpersonal trust and knowledge sharing norms are weak will be the basis for people's tendency to hoard knowledge. The impact of social culture, the preference of individual interests over organizational and national interests, the prevalence of materialistic values in society, the unfavorable conditions of the labor market and economic needs make people tend to use knowledge as a source of their power, status and interests and use it to to hoard.

Conclusion: The various individual and organizational consequences resulting from the tendency of employees, especially technical experts with valuable and rare knowledge, to hoard their knowledge makes the effort to manage behavioral complications as a vital necessity to the attention of managers and organizations. For this purpose, it is necessary to know the factors affecting the emergence of these behavioral tendencies and apply appropriate solutions to them. The findings of this research have provided valuable knowledge in this field. Knowing these factors can be the basis for the effective management of this behavioral problem in technology-oriented organizations such as the target society of this study.