The Effect of Despotic Leadership on the Concealment of Knowledge through Mediation of Organizational Indifference

There are various reasons for concealment of knowledge. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of despotic leadership on the concealment of knowledge through mediation of organizational indifference.

The research method was descriptive-correlation based on the structural equation model. The statistical population of the research was the faculty members of the University of Sistan and Baluchistan in the academic year 2022-2023. Using stratified random sampling, 212 faculty members were studied through questionnaires of despotic leadership (Lu et al., 2012), organizational knowledge concealment (Connelly et al., 2012) and organizational indifference (Danai Fard et al., 2019). To review the validity of the questionnaires, the indicators of confirmatory factor analysis and divergent validity were used, and Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to determine reliability, and its value was 0.878 for oppressive leadership, 0.701 for hiding organizational knowledge, and 0.829 for organizational indifference. For data analysis, Pearson's correlation coefficient and structural equation model were used with the help of SPSS and Smart PLS 3 software.

despotic leadership had a positive and meaningful effect on the concealment of organizational knowledge; despotic leadership had a positive and meaningful effect on organizational indifference; Organizational indifference had a positive and meaningful effect on hiding organizational knowledge; despotic leadership had a positive and meaningful effect on the concealment of organizational knowledge with the mediating role of organizational indifference.

Therefore, it can be concluded that when employees witness oppressive leadership behaviors in the workplace, they gradually become indifferent to the organization, management, colleagues, subordinates, and stakeholders of the organization. It is obvious that organizational indifference causes employees to move towards knowledge concealment behaviors by postponing answers and information, providing incomplete information, pretending to be ignorant of the subject, and providing inaccurate information.