This conceptual paper aims to identify and present the potential impacts of employee withdrawal on knowledge management processes in organizations i.e.: knowledge sharing & transfer, knowledge creation & development, knowledge application, and storage. Employee withdrawal is a subtype of counterproductive work behaviour and a critical issue for organisations. Specifically, it refers to a set of attitudes and behaviours used by employees when they stay at the job but for some reason decide to be less participative in duty engagement. Employee withdrawal may take either a physical or a psychological form and may begin with small and irrelevant actions like being late, or daydreaming, but they might culminate in more serious and significant behaviours like absenteeism, missing meetings, cyberloafing, or quitting that can be detrimental to the organization. Most research frames employee withdrawal behaviours as negative behaviours from the organizational point of view, mostly due to cost. However, a large proportion of organizational knowledge is personalized and resides in individuals’ heads, therefore researching employee withdrawal behaviours is particularly critical in the context of knowledge management. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are no publications that comprehensively describe the potential impact of employee withdrawal on different knowledge management processes. In the face of the above, there is a clear need to investigate how employee withdrawal behaviours may potentially harm knowledge sharing & transfer,, knowledge creation & development, knowledge application, and storage in organisations.
To do so, the authors of this paper related the found literature and described the potential impact of employee withdrawal behaviours on different knowledge management processes. Furthermore, the selected sources have been analysed in relation to each other, identifying conceptual overlaps which help in understanding how employee withdrawal behaviours may impact various knowledge processes.
Originality/value – The paper contributes to the understanding of the relationship between employee withdrawal behaviours and knowledge management processes.
Practical implications – The study provides food for thought for managers and owners on how the withdrawal behaviours of their employees might potentially hinder knowledge sharing, transfer, creation, development, application and knowledge storage in their organizations.