A systematic review of the impact of leadership styles on knowledge hiding: a meta-analysis approach

Knowledge is always considered a valuable asset and strength for organizations, and its achievement is a competitive advantage for organizations. Just as sharing knowledge has positive consequences for the organization, knowledge hiding can have destructive effects on the organization's performance in various aspects. It is necessary to encourage the factors that reduce the knowledge hiding behavior of employees, and one of the strongest factors of this is the leadership in the organization. The aim of this study is to systematic review the impact of different leadership styles on knowledge hiding with a meta-analytical approach. From a total of 167 articles that were obtained in the initial search from reliable scientific information and citation databases, 24 articles were finally selected for meta-analysis based on the protocol clauses. The analyzes show that according to the heterogeneity of the reviewed studies in relation to the research hypotheses based on the random effect size, the effect of all leadership styles on knowledge hiding is confirmed. Also, the results of the fail-safe N test show the stability and immutability of the results of this research. The results of this research show that ethical, altruistic, knowledge, inclusive and empowering leadership styles have a negative effect on knowledge hiding and exploitative leadership style has a positive effect on knowledge hiding.