Knowledge Theft at Work: A Victim's Perspective
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As today’s organizational economy is increasingly defined by knowledge-based work, employees value credit in exchange for their contributions as the currency of success. Credit is conceptualized as a perceptual recognition made by others that one is responsible for a contribution or work-related outcome. Existing research documents the value of credit, revealing that accruing credit can lead to realized career success via financial rewards, promotions, and/or other forms of upward mobility within and across organizations. Although literature on credit points to a multitude of benefits associated with receiving it, little is known about the impact of having one’s credit stolen by others. I name this phenomenon knowledge theft. Across one qualitative and two quantitative studies, this dissertation explores knowledge theft from the victim’s perspective. In Study 1, I used an inductive, exploratory approach where I interviewed 30 individuals who had been a target of knowledge theft at work. I drew from literature on credit to guide my analysis. The results from this study suggested loss to career success was a defining feature of knowledge theft for victims. This loss was the catalyst for a series of behavioural outcomes that involved coping with the negative event and protecting oneself from knowledge theft in the future. In studies 2 and 3, I took a quantitative approach to replicate subsets of the relationships identified in Study 1. I drew from literature on territoriality theory and employee victimization and used a survey methodology in Study 2 and a vignette methodology in Study 3 to test the research hypotheses. Across both studies, I found further support for the role that loss to career success plays as a mechanism explaining the relationship between knowledge theft and behavioural outcomes. In Study 3, I also looked at the role power played in influencing victims’ responses. The evidence suggests that when the victims is of equal relative power to the perpetrator, victims are most likely to engage in behaviours that restore ownership over their work (i.e., active coping) and protect their knowledge in the future. I close by outlining theoretical and practical implications of my findings for individuals and organizations.
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