Investigating the Impact of Territorialism on Performance and deviance in the Workplace with Emphasis on Knowledge Hiding (Case study: Mashhad Central Municipality)

Knowledge as a resource multiplies with its applications, but the general tendency of man is to believe in knowledge as a limited resource that must be hidden, much research has been done on knowledge sharing, however now, the concept of knowledge concealment has not been discovered yet. Also, the observations made show the failure and organizational efforts to prevent the concealment and sharing of knowledge in organizations, and employees are often reluctant to share their knowledge. In some cases, they protect it like a treasure, and this reluctance and concealment of knowledge continues even when knowledge sharing is encouraged and rewarded for doing so. The present study is a descriptive survey and is applied in terms of purpose, the main purpose of which is to investigate the impact of territorialism on performance and misconduct in the workplace with emphasis on knowledge concealment among employees of the central municipality of Mashhad. The statistical population of the study included 1200 employees of Mashhad Central Municipality, of which 291 were selected based on Morgan table. A standard questionnaire with appropriate validity and reliability was used. Also, available probability sampling method was used to collect information. Findings and results showed that territorialism and knowledge concealment have a negative and significant effect on performance but have a positive and significant effect on workplace deviation.