When leaders harm and peers undermine: pathways to knowledge hiding and fear of negative evaluation

Purpose Top managers set the tone for how people treat one another and how safe it feels to share what they know. Drawing on social exchange theory and social information processing, this study aims to examine how abusive supervision by top managers shapes employees’ knowledge hiding. Design/methodology/approach Structural equation model was applied to the cross-sectional sample of 371 respondents working in multiple industries across the USA and UK. Findings Abusive behavior from top managers does not directly make employees hide knowledge. Instead, it works through two relational and cognitive routes. Abusive supervision encourages peer social undermining, which in turn increases knowledge hiding. It also heightens employees’ fear of being judged negatively, which likewise promotes knowledge hiding. Together, these two mediators produce a strong total indirect effect of abusive supervision on knowledge hiding, while interactional justice does not play a significant mediating role. Practical implications Organizations that want to build knowledge-sharing cultures must pay attention to toxic signals from the top, because such behavior quietly fuels hostile peer dynamics and anxiety, both of which discourage openness. Originality/value This study shows that abusive leadership behavior influences knowledge hiding not through direct coercion but through its social and psychological fallout, thereby extending leadership, knowledge management and organizational behavior research on the cascading effects of toxic leadership.