Crippling influence of knowledge hiding on the innovative performance of GDAD group

ABSTRACT

For a software company, innovative performance is a key factor for achieving sustainable development and maintaining competitive advantage in the market. However, knowledge hiding negatively affects the innovative performance of groups. Thus, this study focuses mainly on how to weaken such a negative relationship so as to indirectly improve the innovative performance of groups. Referring to the literature on knowledge management, we established a theoretical framework based on social exchange theory. We empirically tested this framework by using survey data from 180 software developers in 48 geographically distributed agile development (GDAD) groups. Results show that knowledge hiding exerts a significant negative effect on the innovative performance of GDAD groups. Nevertheless, this negative influence can be effectively weakened by transactive memory system and social media. This model integrates two theoretical viewpoints and highlights how to improve the innovative performance of teams by weakening the extensive knowledge hiding.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge management
• knowledge hiding
• geographically distributed agility development
• innovative performance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Humanity and Social Science foundation of Ministry of Education of China (No.18YJA630043)No.16YJA630068; Shaanxi Social Science Foundation in China (No.2018S28).