Hiding behind a mask? Cultural intelligence, knowledge hiding, and individual and team creativity

TLDR

Culturally diverse colleagues can stimulate workplace creativity only when they share knowledge. The study proposes that cross‑cultural interactions and cultural intelligence moderate the negative impact of knowledge hiding on individual and team creativity. Using social exchange and social categorization theories, the authors model cross‑cultural interactions and cultural intelligence as moderators of the knowledge hiding–creativity link. Field and quasi‑experimental studies show that knowledge hiding negatively affects individual and team creativity, but cultural intelligence weakens this negative effect.

Abstract

Culturally diverse colleagues can be valuable sources for stimulating creativity at work, yet only if they decide to share their knowledge. Drawing on the social exchange theory, we propose that cross-cultural interactions among individuals from different national backgrounds can act as a salient contingency in the relationship between knowledge hiding and creativity (individual and team). We further suggest, based on the social categorization theory (e.g., the categorization process of "us" against "them" based on national differences), that cultural intelligence enhances the likelihood of high-quality social exchanges between culturally diverse individuals and, therefore, remedies the otherwise negative relationship between individual knowledge hiding and individual creativity. Two studies using field and experimental data offer consistent support for this argument. First, a field study of 621 employees nested among 70 teams revealed that individual knowledge hiding is negatively related to individual creativity and that cultural intelligence moderates the relationship between knowledge hiding and creativity at an individual level. A quasi-experimental study of 104 international students nested in 24 teams replicated and extended these findings by implying that individual knowledge hiding is also negatively related to team creativity. We discuss the implications for practice and future research.