This study aimed to understand the psychological process behind employees’ knowledge hiding (KH) behaviors in organizations. KH is an intentional act of concealing knowledge when it is requested by a colleague and can lead to counterproductive consequences for the organization. Therefore, this study synthesized previous studies (n = 88) on KH through a systematic literature review. We used the cognitive–motivational–relational (CMR) theory of emotion to create a framework for the studies’ findings. Based on the framework, the psychological process behind KH has two stages—personal goal generation and the knowledge-request event appraisal process, each of which contains its own CMR process. In the first stage, an individual’s internal and external attributes related to the organization shape their personal goals. In the second stage, an individual appraises the features of a knowledge-request event in terms of both their personal goal and the internal and external attributes that created the goal. If the knowledge request is appraised as harmful for the personal goal, emotion arises and leads to the manifestation of KH. This study contributes to the knowledge management literature as, to our knowledge, it is the first to propose a CMR theory-based framework to understand the overall psychological process behind KH.

Purpose: In this study, the authors examine how employees' retention intentions are related to their proactive personalities through the theoretical lens of the model of motivational force of turnover and the model of proactive motivation. More specifically, the authors also verify the partial mediation of work engagement on the main relationship and moderation of high-performance human resource practices (HPHRPs) in the process, which has rarely been explored previously.Design/methodology/approach: The hypothesized model was tested using partial least squares structural equational modeling on a sample of 221 employees of a bank in Bangladesh.Findings: The results showed that having a proactive personality is positively related to retention intentions due to enhanced work engagement. However, the effect of the interaction between having a proactive personality and HPHRPs was found to be not significant on work engagement and retention intention.Originality/value: This study contributes to the literature by exploring the reason behind mixed results found in the relationship between having a proactive personality and retention intentions through work engagement as a mediator and HPHRPs as a contextual boundary condition in a single model.