Abstract: Knowledge hiding is a defensive behavior aimed at protecting personal resources, it impedes knowledge flow within organizations and severely impacts organizational effectiveness. Although existing research on the impact of various leadership styles on employee knowledge hiding is abundant, the specific influence of leaders’ high performance expectations—a distinct leadership behavioral characteristic—remains an underexplored domain. Previous studies have predominantly focused on the positive outcomes of high performance expectations, paying insufficient attention to its potential "dark side." Drawing upon Conservation of Resources Theory, this study constructs a moderated mediation model to investigate the mediating role of workplace anxiety and the moderating role of competitive climate. Using a multi-stage longitudinal survey design, data were collected from 329 employees across 72 teams, followed by cross-level analyses. The results indicate that workplace anxiety mediates the relationship between leaders’ high performance expectations and employee knowledge hiding. Furthermore, competitive climate strengthens the relationship between leaders’ high performance expectations and workplace anxiety; it also moderates the indirect effect of leaders’ high performance expectations on knowledge hiding via workplace anxiety. These findings are significant for understanding the underlying mechanisms linking leaders’ high performance expectations to knowledge hiding, providing new insights for managers to set reasonable performance goals and mitigate knowledge hiding behaviors.

Key words: knowledge hiding, high performance expectations, workplace anxiety, competitive climate