# Illegitimate tasks, knowledge hiding, and performance erosion: a four-wave latent change score investigation

## TL;DR

Unnecessary and unreasonable tasks lead to knowledge hiding, which in turn reduces employee performance over time.

## Contribution

The study introduces a dynamic model showing how illegitimate tasks affect performance via knowledge hiding.

## Key findings

- Unnecessary tasks increase knowledge hiding, which erodes performance.
- Unreasonable tasks also indirectly harm performance through knowledge hiding.
- Defective task design undermines collaborative exchanges by amplifying knowledge hiding.

## Abstract

This four-wave longitudinal study reframes unnecessary and unreasonable tasks as relational stimuli. Latent change score modeling on 250 employees (1 month intervals) showed that within-person increases in unnecessary tasks heightened knowledge hiding (β = 0.30-0.32), which subsequently eroded task performance (indirect effect = −0.12 to−0.14). Unreasonable tasks exerted comparable indirect harm (indirect = −0.11 to−0.12) but carried no significant direct effect on performance (β = −0.08, p = 0.183). Thus, both forms of illegitimate tasks damage later performance solely through the amplification of knowledge hiding, challenging static “stressor–strain” assumptions and underscoring the need to curb defective task design before collaborative exchanges are undermined.