How Peer Abusive Supervision Affects Sales Employees’ Customer Knowledge Hiding: The Roles of Rivalry and Schadenfreude

PURPOSE: This study aims to examine the impacts of peer abusive supervision, perceived rivalry and schadenfreude over the abused peers on sales employees’ customer knowledge hiding. METHODS: We conducted multiple regression analyses of 283 sales employees’ responses from two Chinese and two South Korean electronic device companies to test the hypotheses, which constitute a theoretical framework. RESULTS: Our empirical results confirmed the positive impact of peer abusive supervision on sales employees’ customer knowledge hiding, with the relationship moderated by rivalry and schadenfreude; moreover, rivalry and schadenfreude jointly exert the greatest impacts on the main effect. CONCLUSION: This study sheds light on the knowledge hiding literature, with theoretical implications for the research regarding the spillover effect of abusive supervision, rivalry, schadenfreude, customer knowledge sharing, and managerial practices about the management of customer knowledge among sales employees.