Integrating the bright and dark sides of communication visibility for knowledge management and creativity: The moderating role of regulatory focus

Drawing on communication visibility theory, we examine how message transparency and network translucence influence employees' knowledge sharing and hiding, and in turn how those are associated with employees' creativity. Applying regulatory focus theory, we further examine how promotion and prevention focus moderate the effects of message transparency and network translucence on knowledge sharing and hiding. Data collected from 208 enterprise social media (ESM) users indicate that message transparency is positively related to knowledge sharing, while it has no association with knowledge hiding. In turn, network translucence is positively related to knowledge sharing and hiding. Promotion focus positively moderates the relationship of message transparency with knowledge sharing, but it exerts no moderating effect on the relationship between network translucence and knowledge sharing. Prevention focus negatively moderates the relationship of message transparency with knowledge hiding, but it positively moderates the relationship between network translucence and knowledge hiding. Finally, knowledge sharing is positively associated with employee creativity, whereas knowledge hiding is negatively related to employee creativity. Our findings advance the understanding of communication visibility theory and regulatory focus theory in ESM contexts. For employees, the findings suggest that they should share knowledge with other coworkers to improve their creativity. For organizations, the findings recommend that they should implement different policies that highlight the regulatory focus of employees to facilitate their knowledge sharing and to avoid knowledge hiding.