The effect of job stress on the relationship between organizational ostracism and knowledge hiding

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of job stress on the relationship between organizational ostracism and knowledge hiding in the metropolitan area of Ahvaz. Methodology: The research was applied and carried out using an analytical survey. The statistical population of the study included all the employees of the Ahvaz Metropolitan Municipality, over 3000 people, 341 of whom were selected as the research sample by stratified random sampling. The data were collected as part of a field study using questionnaires from previous studies on organizational ostracism (Chang et al., 2021), knowledge hiding (Demirkasimoglu, 2016), and job stress (Wooten et al., 2010). The validity of the instrument was approved formally and its reliability was confirmed using Cronbach's alpha coefficient (0.830, 0.869, and 0.884) levels, respectively. The data were analyzed with the structural equation modeling method and AMOS software. Findings: The test of research hypotheses showed that there is a relationship between organizational ostracism by knowledge hiding (β=0.51 and t-Value=8.5) and job stress (β=0.73 and t-Value 11.59) and there is a significant relationship between job stress and knowledge hiding (β=0.44 and t-Value=7.805). In addition, the results revealed that job stress had a direct effect on the causal relationship between organizational ostracism and knowledge hiding (β=0.828) and that (β=0.321) is significant at (p<0.05). Conclusion: It is concluded that organizational ostracism brings about negative consequences such as job stress and hidden knowledge. It means that the organization members miss the opportunity to use communication networks  between organization members and knowledge resources. It also increases the costs of providing services and dependence on knowledge resources outside the organization.