Telling “white lies” within the entrepreneurial firm: How rationalized knowledge hiding between founder CEO and founder CTO influences new product development

Chang Xiong, Leven J. Zheng, Rony Germon, Jean-Paul Susini and Victor Chang

Journal of Business Research, 2021, vol. 136, issue C, 431-439

Abstract: Most knowledge hiding studies focus on its dark side. In contrast, we theorize the potential positive effect of rationalized knowledge hiding in the context of entrepreneurial firms’ new product development (NPD) speed. We extended and integrated theoretical perspectives of rationalized knowledge hiding and trust in theorizing that rationalized knowledge hiding accelerates NPD—a component considered critical to firm survival and growth. We developed and analyzed two datasets on the founder CEOs and the founder CTOs of 279 high-technology entrepreneurial firms in China to test this assumption. Empirical results suggest that CTOs’ rationalized knowledge hiding from CEOs accelerates these firms’ NPD. Further, such acceleration is slower (faster) when CEOs’ affective (cognitive) trust in CTOs is higher. Overall, we theorize that rationalized knowledge hiding has a positive impact on entrepreneurial firms’ NPD. The study offers a unique contribution to understanding the link between knowledge hiding and NPD, and practical implications for entrepreneurial firms.

Keywords: Entrepreneurial firm; Innovation; Knowledge hiding; New product development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296321005348
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:136:y:2021:i:c:p:431-439

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.07.039

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().