Investigating the relationship between exploitative leadership and knowledge hiding through the mediating role of psychological distress

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between exploitative leadership and knowledge hiding due to the mediating role of psychological distress. The research method was descriptive-correlational. The statistical population of the study included all teachers in the second district of Shiraz in the academic year 1300-1400 to 1945 people, which was selected using a simple random sampling method based on Cochran's formula of a sample of 319 teachers from this community. To collect data from the Schmid et al. Exploratory Leadership Questionnaire (2019); Lovibond and Lovibond (1995) psychological distress questionnaire and Connelly and Zweig (2015) knowledge hiding questionnaire were used, whose Cronbach's alpha coefficients were 0.97, 0.91 and 0.94, respectively. The construct validity of the questionnaires was also determined by confirmatory factor analysis. Data analysis was performed using structural equation modeling using Spss and lisrel software. Findings showed that: exploitative leadership has a positive and significant relationship with knowledge hiding and psychological distress at the level of 0.05; Psychological distress also has a positive and significant relationship with knowledge hiding at the level of 0.05; Exploitative leadership has an indirect, positive and significant relationship with knowledge hiding due to its mediating role in psychological distress. Therefore, if school principals and leaders have negative characteristics and characteristics of exploitative leadership, they create a non-constructive atmosphere in the school by abusing the efforts of teachers; In this destructive atmosphere, teachers, with psychological anxiety and distress, hide their knowledge and information from other colleagues in order to confront these leaders.