Leader Narcissism and Employee Knowledge Management Behavior: The Roles of Employees’ Trust in Management and Power Distance Orientation

Abstract

The current literature is becoming increasingly interested in employee management behavior. In this article, we focus on how leader narcissism affects employees’ knowledge management behavior, including knowledge sharing, knowledge hiding, and knowledge manipulation. The questionnaire was administered to 260 employees in mainland China to test our hypothesis. Results showed that leader narcissism is significantly related to employee knowledge management behaviors. Specifically, leader narcissism is negatively related to employee knowledge sharing, and is positively related to employee knowledge hiding and manipulating. Employee trust in management mediates these relationships, and power distance orientation moderates the relationship between leader narcissism and employees’ trust in management. Our study discusses theoretical and practical implications.