When Knowledge Sharing Goes Wrong: A Conceptual Examination of Knowledge Sabotage

ABSTRACT Knowledge sabotage is a counterproductive knowledge behavior that exploits informational dependence to harm specific coworkers. Yet research remains theoretically fragmented and offers no cumulative account of how relational targeting emerges, how sabotage is enacted in everyday knowledge flows, and when it escalates into broader organizational dysfunction. This lack of integration limits mechanism precision and weakens actionable guidance for prevention. In response, this article offers an integrative, interactionist multilevel perspective that centers the saboteur–target relationship as the focal unit of analysis. Drawing on victim precipitation, frustration–aggression, and approach–avoidance perspectives, the article develops a process account of how relationship‐specific dependence structures shape targeting, how relational appraisals and strain can be displaced into covert knowledge‐based harm, and how organizational signals shape enactment versus restraint. Moral emotions are incorporated to clarify how judgments acquire moral force and translate into omission, delay, misdirection, or distortion in routine knowledge exchanges. Psychosocial safety climate is theorized as a cross‐level condition that shapes accountability expectations and influences whether sabotage remains episodic or becomes self‐reinforcing over time. Overall, the article synthesizes dispersed insights into a coherent multilevel process perspective and identifies theoretical and practical leverage points for mitigating covert knowledge harm.