Investigating the effect of ethical leadership on knowledge concealment by explaining the mediating role of relational social capital and instrumental thinking (case study: employees of Lorestan University)

The present study examines the effect of ethical leadership on knowledge concealment by explaining the mediating role of relational social capital and instrumental thinking. This research is among quantitative research and also has a comparative approach in terms of research philosophy. The statistical population of the research is 360 employees of Lorestan University, considering that the size of the statistical population is limited and specific, Morgan's formula was used to determine the sample size, and at the level of 95% of the sample volume, 182 people were determined and selected by available sampling method. In this research, the standard questionnaire of Hong et al. (2019), Kabiz (2004), Kalshon et al. (2011), Connelly et al. (2011) was used whose validity and reliability have been confirmed using the content validity method and Cronbach's alpha. In this research, structural equation modeling approach and SPSS and PLS software were used to investigate and test the hypotheses. The findings showed that ethical leadership has a negative and significant effect on knowledge concealment. Also, ethical leadership has a positive and significant effect on relational social capital and a negative and significant effect on instrumental thinking. The research results show that relational social capital and instrumental thinking play a mediating role in the effect of ethical leadership on knowledge concealment.