Dispositional greed and knowledge sabotage: the roles of cutting corners at work and ethical leadership

Knowledge sabotage is alarmingly widespread in the workplace, resulting in detrimental consequences for the victim, organization, and other stakeholders. However, there is a dearth of empirical research on this phenomenon's predisposing and inhibiting factors. Against this backdrop, the current study developed and tested a model in which dispositional greed and cutting corners at work were considered predisposing factors. At the same time, ethical leadership was regarded as an inhibitor. Data were collected in three waves, with a time lag of three weeks intervals, from 322 full-time employees in various organizations spanning different sectors in Nigeria. The measurement and structural models of the study were analyzed with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results revealed that dispositional greed was positively related to cutting corners at work but not knowledge sabotage. Cutting corners at work and ethical leadership had positive and negative relationships with knowledge sabotage, respectively. Whereas cutting corners at work mediated the positive relationship between dispositional greed and knowledge sabotage, ethical leadership did not moderate the relationship between cutting corners at work and knowledge sabotage. Regarding implications of the findings, management can ensure that unnecessary bureaucratic bottlenecks that drastically slowdown work processes and stringent deadlines that make employees want to take shortcuts to save time are reduced if not completely eradicated. Organizations should also devise specific strategies to ensure that leaders adopt ethical leadership by, for example, making ethical leadership the reference criterion for selecting and evaluating leaders' performance.