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Practical wisdom in the workplace: conceptualization, instrument

development, and predictive power

Article in Journal of Knowledge Management · February 2024

DOI: 10.1108/JKM-08-2023-0713

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Practical wisdom in the workplace:
conceptualization, instrument
development, and predictive power
Alexander Serenko

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this Real Impact Research Article is to empirically explore one of the most
controversial and elusive concepts in knowledge management research – practical wisdom. It develops
a 10-dimensional practical wisdom construct and tests it within the nomological network of
counterproductive and productive knowledge behavior.
Design/methodology/approach – A survey instrument was created based on the extant literature. A
model was developed and tested by means of Partial Least Squares with data obtained from 200
Alexander Serenko is
experienced employees recruited from CloudResearch Connect crowdsourcing platform.
based at the Faculty of
Findings – Practical wisdom is a multidimensional construct that may be operationalized and measured
Business and IT, University like other well-established knowledge management concepts. Practical wisdom guides employee
of Ontario Institute of counterproductive and productive knowledge behavior: it suppresses knowledge sabotage and
Technology, Oshawa, knowledge hiding (whether general, evasive, playing dumb, rationalized or bullying) and promotes
Canada and Faculty of knowledge sharing. While all proposed dimensions contribute to employee practical wisdom, particularly
Information, University of salient are subject matter expertise, moral purpose in decision-making, self-reflection in the workplace
Toronto, Toronto, Canada. and external reflection in the workplace. Unexpectedly, practical wisdom facilitates knowledge hoarding
instead of reducing it.
Practical implications – Managers should realize that possessing practical wisdom is not limited to a
group of select, high-level executives. Organizations may administer the practical wisdom questionnaire
presented in this study to their workers to identify those who score the lowest, and invest in employee
training programs that focus on the development of those attributes pertaining to the practical wisdom
dimensions.
Originality/value – The concept of practical wisdom is a controversial topic that has both detractors and
supporters. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first large-scale empirical study of practical
wisdom in the knowledge management domain.
Keywords Practical wisdom, Phronesis, Scale, Survey, Questionnaire, Knowledge sabotage,
Knowledge hiding, Knowledge hoarding
Paper type Real Impact Research Article

1. Introduction
To understand wisdom fully and correctly probably requires more wisdom than any of us have.
(Sternberg, 1990, p. 3)

Received 11 August 2023 Inspired by the seminal works by Nonaka and his colleagues (Nonaka et al., 2008, 2014;
Revised 22 December 2023 Nonaka, 2013; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 2021), knowledge management researchers have
Accepted 11 January 2024
recently focused their attention on the potentially promising yet controversial topic of
The author is grateful to two
anonymous JKM reviewers and
practical wisdom (phronesis) and its role in various aspects of organizational functioning
the Associate Editor for their (Jakubik and Müürsepp, 2022; Rocha et al., 2022a, 2022b; Bratianu and Bejinaru, 2023;
developmental feedback on the
previous version of this Real
Jakubik, 2023). Their interest in the topic stems from Nonaka’s argument that practical
Impact Research Article. wisdom is not limited to top management: instead, it may be possessed and practiced by

PAGE 2092 j JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT j VOL. 28 NO. 7 2024, pp. 2092-2119, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 1367-3270 DOI 10.1108/JKM-08-2023-0713
employees at all organizational levels. Nonaka argues that wise employees exhibit certain
characteristics that help them make better decisions, leading to the long-term prosperity of
both internal and external organizational stakeholders. For example, wise workers may rely
on their wisdom to bridge the gap between current, past-oriented knowledge and
unpredictable future events (Intezari and Pauleen, 2017) and better understand cross-
cultural knowledge management issues (Pauleen et al., 2010). Cultivating practical wisdom
within organizations is also necessary to facilitate productive knowledge behavior (Ding
et al., 2019), including knowledge sharing (Cuguero-Escofet and Rosanas, 2020).
Regrettably, despite these pioneering attempts to introduce the notion of practical wisdom
into the mainstream knowledge management literature, the uptake of this line of research
has been extremely slow, and its coverage has been highly superficial (Jakubik and
Müürsepp, 2022). For instance, as of August 2023, no paper published in the Journal of
Knowledge Management, the discipline’s premier journal (Serenko and Bontis, 2022), has
cited the seminal Harvard Business Review article titled “The Wise Leader” by Nonaka and
Takeuchi (2011). In fact, except for three notable works (Rowley and Slack, 2009; Alammar
and Pauleen, 2016; Qayyum et al., 2022), prior wisdom research in the knowledge
management domain has been purely conceptual (Jakubik and Müürsepp, 2022; Rocha
et al., 2022a, 2022b). The detractors of the notion of wisdom, including such knowledge
management thought leaders as Dave Snowden and Patrick Lambe, refer to the lack of
conceptual clarity, theoretical foundation and empirical evidence of the value of wisdom in
the context of the contemporary organization (Straits Knowledge, 2008; Teo-Dixon and
Sayers, 2011; Sole , 2017; Lambe, 2023) – and rightly so. Knowledge management is an
applied discipline founded on the works of practitioners (Serenko et al., 2010), but the
problem is that busy managers, consultants and individual workers find it difficult to quickly
grasp such an abstract concept and put it to use. Unless industry professionals can
productively apply the notion of practical wisdom in their routine work, this line of research is
likely to stagnate and eventually wither.
Creating a new line of research on practical wisdom may also help to ensure further maturity
and recognition of the knowledge management discipline. Throughout its short yet
remarkable history, knowledge management has been successfully drawing upon and
extending knowledge in other scientific domains, such as management, information
systems, education, economics and psychology (Serenko, 2021). By introducing an
empirically validated research area devoted to practical wisdom, the knowledge
management field may infuse its ideas into other scientific domains and further progress
toward achieving the coveted status of the reference discipline. As such, this study answers
the recent call by Jevnaker and Olaisen (2022) and Edwards and Lönnqvist (2023) for the
development of original, homegrown knowledge with both theoretical and practical
implications within the knowledge management domain and beyond.
To contribute to this challenging goal, this Real Impact Research Article informs
practitioners about the value of practical wisdom and forms the foundation for further
empirical research both within and outside of the knowledge management discipline. For
this, it first develops and validates a survey instrument that measures practical wisdom of
individual employees. This instrument comprises ten theoretically grounded dimensions
with each tapping into a specific aspect of practical wisdom relevant in the workplace
environment. Previous scholars from the social science domain have produced a number of
wisdom measurement scales (e.g. see Baltes and Smith, 1990; Ardelt, 2003; Webster,
2003; Mickler and Staudinger, 2008; Brienza et al., 2018; Glück, 2018; Rocha et al., 2021).
The key contribution of these studies is that they demonstrate that it is possible to measure
the presumably elusive and intangible construct of wisdom by approaching it from a
multidimensional stance. These investigations have also identified many attributes of
wisdom that may be salient in the workplace environment. At the same time, such studies
have focused on either people’s wisdom in general (i.e. not on practical wisdom) or on

VOL. 28 NO. 7 2024 j JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT j PAGE 2093

 wisdom at the organizational level of analysis instead of measuring the wisdom possessed
by individual employees and exploring how it affects their counterproductive and
productive work behavior, which is the purpose of the present investigation[1]. In addition,
the previous scales use only a few dimensions each while this study’s instrument includes
ten dimensions, which increases its theoretical richness and practical relevance.
Second, this Real Impact Research Article demonstrates the predictive validity of the
proposed practical wisdom scale. In particular, it shows that employees who possess
practical wisdom suppress their counterproductive knowledge behavior such as knowledge
sabotage and knowledge hiding (whether general, evasive, playing dumb, rationalized, or
bullying) and improve their productive knowledge behavior such as knowledge sharing.
Equipped with this knowledge, practitioners may apply the proposed scale in various
employee-assessment exercises to predict and explain their workers’ knowledge behavior.
As a result, knowledge management scholars and practitioners who were previously
skeptical about the value, applicability and the very existence of practical wisdom may
change their minds and engage in a productive discourse of this important and useful
notion for the benefit of both scholarship and practice.
Presently, the theoretical and empirical literature on practical wisdom is well-developed
outside the knowledge management domain. Combining the key findings, concepts and
principles from this intellectual repository with the advanced knowledge management
literature revealed ten dimensions of practical wisdom and eight outcome constructs which
eliminated the need for relying on a qualitative method. As a result, a nomological network
was developed and tested by means of a quantitative study with SmartPLS 4 (Ringle et al.,
2022). A quantitative study design was chosen because the use of standardized
procedures and statistical techniques facilitates a rigorous testing of proposed hypotheses
in an easily reproducible environment.
The rest of this paper is structured as follows. The next section, Section 2, introduces
practical wisdom, identifies its dimensions and hypothesizes the predictive power of
practical wisdom in the knowledge management context. Section 3 describes the research
instrument, study design and participants. Section 4 documents the results, and Section 5
discusses the findings, makes recommendations and concludes the study.

2. Theoretical background
2.1 Practical wisdom in knowledge management research
Despite some reluctance among knowledge management researchers and practitioners to
embrace the notion of practical wisdom (Straits Knowledge, 2008; Teo-Dixon and Sayers,
2011; Sole , 2017), this topic has already gained recognition in the context of knowledge
management. It has been argued that employees acquire wisdom through experience, the
accumulation of tacit knowledge, extraordinary consciousness (a heightened sensitivity to,
awareness of and connection with one’s unconscious mind) (Bennet and Bennet, 2008b),
mindfulness (Rooney et al., 2021), emotional intelligence (Alammar and Pauleen, 2016),
spirituality (Bierly et al., 2000; Rocha and Pinheiro, 2021) and the ability to remain
emotionally and cognitively balanced (Pauleen et al., 2022). Furthermore, to obtain wisdom,
workers should integrate their current knowledge with a set of values and courage (Bennet
and Porter, 2003). As well, in addition to creating, retaining and enhancing intellectual
capital, organizations may accumulate wisdom capital to improve the well-being and
prosperity of all stakeholder groups (Vasconcelos, 2018; Vasconcelos, 2022).
Wisdom also represents an important construct within the [controversial, e.g. see Lambe
(2023)] DIKW – data, information, knowledge, wisdom – framework (Bierly et al., 2000;
Rowley, 2007), and effective knowledge management processes may transform data,
information, knowledge and wisdom into actionable intelligence (Jennex, 2017). Existing
knowledge management systems represent content-rich repositories which may be

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subjected to automated processes for wisdom extraction (Malik et al., 2019). In the future,
wisdom management may potentially supplement the concept of knowledge management
, 2017; Jakubik and Müürsepp, 2022), and university educators
(Ekmekçi et al., 2014; Sole
should become wisdom workers to cultivate the minds of future world leaders (Jakubik,
2021). Eventually, wisdom should become an indispensable part of knowledge-related
policies and knowledge-based economies (Rooney and Mckenna, 2005).
In addition to the works cited above, Ikujiro Nonaka and his colleagues, including Hirotaka
Takeuchi, have made a dramatic contribution to wisdom research in the knowledge
management context. Inspired by his interest in military history and strategy (Kawamura,
2016), Nonaka studied various characteristics of wartime commanders and identified
several abilities of these wise leaders which he documented in his book Managing Flow
(Nonaka et al., 2008), and he further promoted them in his subsequent publications
(Nonaka, 2013; Nonaka et al., 2014; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 2021). Nonaka and his
colleagues envision both the business world and the entire society progressing from the
wise employee to the wise leader (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 2011), to the wise company
(Nonaka and Takeuchi, 2019) and to wise capitalism (Takeuchi, 2013). Eventually, the world
may even move toward a wisdom economy (Murtaza, 2011).

2.2 The dimensionality of practical wisdom

In other domains, including social science, researchers have already empirically explored
the notion of wisdom by developing various measurement techniques. As a result, a number
of wisdom measures have been introduced which may be grouped under two categories
(Glück, 2018). First, performance measures of wisdom – the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm
(Baltes and Smith, 1990), Grossmann’s conception of wise reasoning (Grossmann and
Kross, 2014), a Thin-Slice measurement technique (Hu et al., 2017) and the Bremen
wisdom paradigm (Mickler and Staudinger, 2008) – ask individuals to assess a hypothetical
or a real-life scenario, and their responses are evaluated by trained raters. Second, self-
report measures of wisdom – the Three-Dimensional Wisdom Scale (Ardelt, 2003), the Self-
Assessed Wisdom Scale (Webster, 2003), the Wisdom as Self-Transcendence Scale
(Levenson et al., 2005), the San Diego Wisdom Scale (Thomas et al., 2019), the Wisdom
Development Scale (Brown and Greene, 2006) and the Brief Wisdom Screening Scale
(Glück et al., 2013) – ask people to retrospectively self-assess their wisdom-related
attitudes, traits, emotions, decisions and behaviors. In addition, Akgün et al. (2019) and
Rocha et al. (2021) proposed a survey-based instrument to measure organizational
wisdom, and Brienza et al. (2018) administered their recently developed Situated Wise
Reasoning Scale to an adult working sample.
Despite the contribution of the instruments above, none of them meets the needs of
managers who would like to assess the degree of practical wisdom of their workers. Thus,
to identify the dimensions of employees’ wisdom, first, the works by Nonaka and his
colleagues were consulted as a starting point. Next, empirical studies by Rowley and Slack
(2009) and Alammar and Pauleen (2016) were explored, followed by a comprehensive
review of the previously proposed wisdom scales cited above. The following subsections
describe the proposed wisdom dimensions in detail.

2.2.1 Moral purpose in decision-making. Moral purpose in decision-making refers to

employees’ intention to make choices to the benefit of all internal and external
organizational stakeholders instead of focusing on their self-interest (Nonaka et al., 2008;
Nonaka and Takeuchi, 2011). It clearly differentiates practical wisdom from practical
intelligence: while the former is oriented toward maximizing the common good of all
organizational stakeholders, the latter is directed at merely improving one’s personal well-
being (Kunzmann, 2019).

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 Virtue has traditionally been considered one of the foremost components of wisdom
(Csikszentmihalyi and Rathunde, 1990), and it is included in the vast majority of wisdom
scales under various labels, such as prosocial values (Bangen et al., 2013), sympathetic
and compassionate love for others (Ardelt, 2011), altruism (Brown and Greene, 2006),
kindness, compassion, warmth (Jason et al., 2001), moral identity (Darnell et al., 2022) and
ethical sensibility (Schmit et al., 2012). Moral purpose in decision-making acts as a key
motivational factor driving workplace actions and choices. As a result, wise employees
always take into consideration the long-term consequences of their actions and the well-
being of all parties involved. They minimize or eliminate the bad faith, subjectivity, egoism,
prejudice and conditioned responses which incorporate inherent bias and push people
away from the moral high ground. Their decisions transcend a mere short-term gain.
Without having a moral purpose in decision-making, it may be difficult for workers to behave
in the best interests of not only their organization but also other stakeholders, including
customers, the community, the general public and the environment.
2.2.2 Subject matter expertise. Subject matter expertise refers to employees’ factual,
conceptual and procedural knowledge relevant to their work performance. Possessing such
knowledge is a necessary (yet insufficient) requirement for exhibiting practical wisdom in
the workplace: while wisdom cannot exist without knowledge, knowledge can exist without
wisdom (Rowley, 2006). In fact, it is impossible to imagine a wise yet unknowledgeable
organizational member, but not every organizational expert may be unquestionably
considered a wise one.
In the existing (nonorganizational) wisdom measurement instruments, the concept of
knowledge has been incorporated as rich factual and procedural knowledge (Baltes and
Smith, 1990; Smith et al., 1994), an understanding of the meaning of life-related phenomena
and events (Ardelt, 2003), life knowledge (Bangen et al., 2013), life skills (Brown and Greene,
2006) and critical life experience (Webster, 2007). While such conceptualizations apply to the
measurement of one’s wisdom in the general domain of life, in the organizational context, such
knowledge must be domain-specific: it pertains to one’s area of expertise rather than to general
life issues. From a practical wisdom perspective, a knowledgeable employee is likely to be the
one who, in addition to formal education, has a depth and breadth of professional expertise,
has experienced various situations in multicultural and global contexts, has learned from his/her
own and others’ mistakes (Nonaka et al., 2008; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 2011) and, as a result,
can remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, create and disseminate vital
organizational knowledge.
2.2.3 Workplace pragmatism. In addition to possessing subject matter expertise, wise
employees should be able to put their proficiency into action by exhibiting workplace
pragmatism. Workplace pragmatism refers to employees’ tendency to consistently focus on
achieving a particular outcome to the minimization or exclusion of cognitive and physical
processes leading to mere theoretical propositions devoid of action. An outcome may be
both tangible (e.g. producing a physical or digital artifact) and intangible (e.g. creating and/
or disseminating valid, relevant and actionable knowledge on the matter of interest).
Workplace pragmatism results from workers’ traits, attitudes, biases, convictions, beliefs,
willingness and mindscape to creatively act, make and engage rather than avoid,
procrastinate and pointlessly debate (Bruch and Ghoshal, 2004; Nonaka and Zhu, 2012).
An employee cannot be considered wise unless he/she can produce useful tangible and
intangible deliverables that are valued in his/her workplace environment. As Bachmann
et al. (2018) argue, “practical wisdom is never geared only towards intellectual recognition
but it always also targets realization in practice” (p. 155).
The knowledge management literature emphasizes the notion of a practical or pragmatic
form of knowledge – knowledge which is actionable and useful within an organizational
context (Bennet and Bennet, 2008a; Guzman, 2009). While practical or pragmatic
knowledge contributes to the repertoire of knowledge successfully applied by wise workers,

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wise employees rely on all forms of knowledge because workplace pragmatism refers to
their ability to focus on a practical outcome achieved through a combination of all available
resources. Previous research has already identified several benefits of pragmatic
orientation (Neneh, 2019; Batool et al., 2023), and, therefore, every wise worker must exhibit
some degree of workplace pragmatism (Rocha et al., 2022a, 2022b).
2.2.4 Emotional intelligence in the workplace. Emotional intelligence in the workplace is
defined as employees’ mental ability to understand their own and co-workers’ emotions and
to regulate their own emotions in a professional environment (Salovey and Mayer, 1990;
Mayer et al., 2008)[2]. Emotional intelligence comprises three theoretically independent
dimensions:

1. appraisal of self-emotions in the workplace, i.e. workers’ ability to understand their

personal feelings and emotional states;

2. appraisal of others’ emotions in the workplace, i.e. workers’ ability to understand other
employees’ feelings and emotional states; and
3. self-regulation of workplace emotions, i.e. workers’ ability to control, adjust and
suppress their workplace emotions (Wong and Law, 2002).
Previous research posits that emotional intelligence plays an important role in the
contemporary organization (Rivera-Vazquez et al., 2009; Krishnakumar et al., 2016; Shariq
et al., 2019; Stawicki et al., 2023). Alammar and Pauleen (2016) – who interviewed senior
managers from diverse, large organizations – concluded that almost all these managers
emphasized emotional intelligence as one of the key wisdom components. In a similar vein,
Darnell et al. (2022) show that the emotional regulative function is a critical component of
wisdom because it helps individuals achieve affective harmony in their phronetic actions.
Including emotional intelligence as a practical wisdom dimension is important for several
reasons. First, workplace conflict is unavoidable because it is virtually impossible to prevent
situations in which some workers believe that their interests, goals, preferences and
worldviews are misaligned with those of others (De Dreu and Gelfand, 2008). Employees
possessing high emotional intelligence are able to read and assess the emotional states of
all parties, including their own emotions (Intezari and Pauleen, 2018), and seek
collaborative solutions (Jordan and Troth, 2002). By better managing their relationships with
others, especially their superiors, emotionally intelligent workers may achieve better job
performance and, therefore, they are likely to be perceived as wise by others (Joseph et al.,
2015). Second, workers may use their emotional intelligence to compensate for their lack of
formal education and academic knowledge (Mayer and Ciarrochi, 2006). Third, some
employees may be considered informal leaders who gain influence over others due to their
wisdom without having formal titles or authority. In this case, emotional intelligence
enhances their leadership and team management skills (Prati et al., 2003) and further
reinforces their position as wise organizational members. Last, emotionally intelligent
workers may better manage and minimize stress (Singh and Sharma, 2012), which helps
them remain calm and self-confident in demanding situations, to reinforce their standing as
wise employees.
2.2.5 Self-reflection in the workplace. Self-reflection in the workplace is a cognitive process
whereby employees intentionally explore, analyze and evaluate their own work-related
experiences to understand their inner state to improve their workplace functioning.
Workplace self-reflection is different from emotional intelligence because the former
includes retrospective self-analysis of broad workplace encounters while the latter is limited
to emotional states. In addition, workplace self-reflection requires deliberate effort
(Weststrate, 2019) while emotional intelligence is one’s trait which is activated automatically.
According to a meta-analysis of wisdom definitions conducted by Bangen et al. (2013), self-
reflection components appear in more than half of all wisdom definitions. For instance,

VOL. 28 NO. 7 2024 j JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT j PAGE 2097

 Ardelt (2011) demonstrates that reflection is one of three main wisdom dimensions, and
Intezari and Pauleen (2018) show that managers’ ability to understand their inner selves,
values, skills, preferences and characteristics contributes to their practical wisdom.
Examples of self-reflection related terms include self-examination, self-awareness, self-
insight, self-understanding, reminiscence, self-referential thought, reflective thought,
introspection, private self-consciousness, intrapersonal curiosity, life review and inner
speech.
There are several features of workplace self-reflection that make it a vital component of
practical wisdom. First, by frequently reflecting on their workplace encounters, people may
realize how their self-functioning evolved over time and initiate a corrective action, if
necessary, which may help them further self-improve. Second, workplace self-reflection
helps workers learn from their own mistakes to make cognitive, affective and behavioral
changes which should be positively perceived by their co-workers. Third, self-reflection
helps individuals consider multiple factors to solve difficult workplace problems (Weststrate
et al., 2019), develop new solutions (Kolodinsky and Bierly, 2013) and account for other
workers’ perspective during conflicts (Grossmann et al., 2021) – all of which improves their
own and others’ work experience. Fourth, by engaging in self-reflection, workers boost their
self-esteem (Johnson and Stapel, 2011) and act confidently. As a result of the cognitive,
affective and behavioral changes above, employees who engage in self-reflection act in a
practically wise manner.
2.2.6 External reflection in the workplace. External reflection in the workplace is a cognitive
process whereby employees intentionally explore, analyze and evaluate their colleagues’
work-related experiences to derive valuable lessons and find ways to improve their own
workplace functioning. In addition to self-reflection, employees may gain practical wisdom
through the process of external reflection, which is also referred to as vicarious learning,
social learning and observational learning. According to social cognitive theory
(Bandura, 1986), employees may expand their understanding of various intricacies of
their workplace – e.g. organizational dynamics, inter-employee relationships, political
forces, labor relations, best practices, solutions to problems and future developments –
by collecting and processing other employees’ experiences. For instance, they may
analyze other workers’ mistakes as a substitute for learning from their own oversights to
find fallacies in their own cognitive, affective and behavioral processes and initiate
corrective changes. As a result, employees practicing external reflection accelerate the
process of self-development and get wiser.
Prior research attests to various benefits of external reflection for employees in an
organizational context. It has been found that engaging in this practice fosters innovation
(Abecassis-Moedas et al., 2016), boosts individual and team performance (Myers, 2018;
Myers, 2021), promotes productive knowledge behavior (van Zoonen et al., 2022) and
stimulates managerial learning (Bledow et al., 2017). Gibson (2008), Liew (2013) and
Qayyum et al. (2022) further argue that workers who engage in external reflection gain
wisdom. In addition, Intezari and Pauleen (2018) empirically demonstrate that external
reflection is a critical dimension of practical wisdom.
2.2.7 Exceeding the bounds of rationality. Exceeding the bounds of rationality refers to
decision-making processes which go beyond the analytical, conscious and explicit
deliberation wherein employees rely on their intuitions, hunches, subjective insights, senses
and other implicit cognitive processes. From the perspective of dual process theories,
human information processing in all domains, including work, is done in two distinct
cognitive systems referred to as automatic vs. controlled (Shiffrin and Schneider, 1977),
peripheral vs. central (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986), intuitive (or System 1) vs. reasoning (or
System 2) (Kahneman, 2003), experiential vs. rational (Epstein et al., 1996), reflexive vs.
reflective (Satpute and Lieberman, 2006) and implicit vs. explicit (Wilson et al., 2000;
Serenko and Turel, 2019). Despite some differences among these models, they generally

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posit that cognitive processes that take place within the former are fast, unconscious,
uncontrollable, automatic and effortless and include non-rational factors while those in the
latter are slow, conscious, deliberate and effortful and include rational factors (Bargh,
1994).
Both management education and practice have traditionally emphasized rational decision-
making processes (Mintzberg, 1994) – the paradigm which Haidt (2001) refers to as “the
worship of reason” (p. 815). A recent Big Data and Business Intelligence/Analytics trend
represents a cornerstone of rational decision-making (Pauleen, 2017; Ardito et al., 2019).
While the benefits of this approach are undeniable, evidence shows that, by relying on non-
rational factors, employees may expand their repertoire of decision-making approaches
and, as a result, make better and wiser decisions (McKenna et al., 2006). In particular,
expertise-based intuition – the rapid generation of decisions rooted in deep domain-specific
knowledge, pattern recognition and automaticity – may lead to fast, accurate and, by
extension, wise decisions under time pressure (Gladwell, 2005; Salas et al., 2010). By thus
exceeding the bounds of rationality, employees may increase their use of the tacit
knowledge which exists and guides their behavior beyond conscious awareness (Johnson,
2007) and, therefore, make better workplace decisions.
2.2.8 Integrative thinking. Integrative thinking refers to the ability of employees to
comfortably face the tension of opposing potential courses of action, sense what lies behind
a situation, discover hidden factors influencing the outcome and keep an open-minded
perspective to select the best, often new, course of action (Martin, 2009; Riel and Martin,
2017). Integrative thinkers intuitively fathom the global nature and meaning of events, things
and people. They keep the entire problem in mind while analyzing its individual parts and
approach the situation holistically while still paying attention to details (Nonaka et al., 2008;
Nonaka and Zhu, 2012).
Integrative thinking culminates in employee wisdom because it allows employees to
formulate ideas, create artifacts, facilitate progress and foster change (Kallio, 2011).
During integration, mental objects are transformed and fused together to achieve a
creative, synergetic effect so that the final product is more than the sum of its parts
(Tynjälä et al., 2020). As such, integrative thinking improves workers’ ability to better
comprehend and solve wicked problems, fosters balanced judgment of complex
scenarios and minimizes cognitive biases. It helps employees extend their attention
beyond their common areas of interest and bridge the gap between arts and science to
discover new perspectives (O’Keefe et al., 2021). Integrative thinkers comfortably
navigate the contemporary corporate world and welcome the volatile, uncertain, complex
and ambiguous external environment because it is where they find the best answers to
their problems (Martin, 2007).

2.3 The predictive power of practical wisdom

One of the key objectives of organizational knowledge management is to facilitate
productive and suppress counterproductive knowledge behavior. Productive knowledge
behavior usually refers to knowledge sharing – the process by which employees provide
their explicit and tacit knowledge to other organizational members (Ford and Staples, 2010)
while counterproductive knowledge behavior may take several forms. Of these, knowledge
sabotage, knowledge hiding and knowledge hoarding have gained momentum in the
literature due to their pernicious effects on organizations and their stakeholders. Knowledge
sabotage occurs “when an employee intentionally provides incorrect knowledge to another
or conceals knowledge from another while being fully aware that the knowledge in question
is needed by and extremely important to the other party” (Serenko and Choo, 2020,
p. 2299). Knowledge hiding refers to a purposeful attempt to conceal knowledge from other
workers when they unambiguously request it (Connelly et al., 2012). In the literature, it is
represented by five relevant constructs: general knowledge hiding (overall, higher-level

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 knowledge hiding behavior) (Peng, 2013); evasive knowledge hiding (when offenders
dodge, stall, or ignore the request); playing dumb knowledge hiding (when offenders
pretend not to possess the requested knowledge); rationalized knowledge hiding (when
offenders justify why they cannot share the requested knowledge) (Connelly et al., 2012);
and bullying knowledge hiding (when offenders attack the knowledge requester) (Yuan
et al., 2021). Knowledge hoarding is the accumulation of knowledge and its strategic
concealment from other organizational members (Oliveira et al., 2021).
This study hypothesizes that practical wisdom has a negative (i.e. suppressive) effect on
employee counterproductive knowledge behavior and a positive (i.e. amplifying) effect on
employee productive knowledge behavior. According to Kelloway and Barling’s (2000)
model of knowledge use in organizations, knowledge behavior is an individual activity which
is guided by three factors: ability, motivation and opportunity (Elbaz et al., 2018). Practically
wise employees have the ability to share the critically needed, correct knowledge with their
fellow co-workers because they possess a great degree of subject matter expertise. By
exceeding the bounds of rationality, wise workers rely on their intuitions, personal insights,
hunches and senses to identify those in need of knowledge and find the best way to impart
this knowledge to them by using integrative thinking. Their ability to read other workers’
emotions and regulate their own (i.e. emotional intelligence) helps them suppress hurtful
actions. Practically wise employees refrain from harming others through knowledge
sabotage, hiding and hoarding. Instead, due to their moral high ground, they experience
enjoyment when helping their fellow co-workers by sharing their knowledge, which reflects
their intrinsic motivation – the most powerful driver of productive knowledge behavior
(Nguyen et al., 2019). Through self-reflection, they realize that they have accumulated much
organizational knowledge and decide to share it with others instead of hoarding it.
Practically wise employees proactively look for opportunities to serve as good citizens
within their organization: they routinely reflect on others’ workplace encounters and, due to
their workplace pragmatism, look for opportunities to contribute. In other words, practically
wise employees intuitively and/or deliberately suppress knowledge sabotage, hiding and
hoarding. Instead, they proactively engage in knowledge sharing. The following hypotheses
are suggested (see Figure 1):

H1. Practical wisdom has a negative effect on knowledge sabotage.

H2. Practical wisdom has a negative effect on general knowledge hiding.
H3. Practical wisdom has a negative effect on evasive knowledge hiding.
H4. Practical wisdom has a negative effect on playing dumb hiding.
H5. Practical wisdom has a negative effect on rationalized knowledge hiding.
H6. Practical wisdom has a negative effect on bullying knowledge hiding.
H7. Practical wisdom has a negative effect on knowledge hoarding.
H8. Practical wisdom has a positive effect on knowledge sharing.

3. Methods
3.1 The instrument
The following sources were used to operationalize the knowledge behavior constructs:
knowledge sabotage – Serenko and Choo (2020); general knowledge hiding – Peng (2013)
(with modifications); evasive knowledge hiding, playing dumb knowledge hiding,
rationalized knowledge hiding, knowledge hoarding and knowledge sharing – Connelly
et al. (2012); and bullying knowledge hiding – Yuan et al. (2021). Items for appraisal of
self-emotions in the workplace, appraisal of others’ emotions in the workplace and self-
regulation of workplace emotions – which represent three facets of emotional intelligence –

PAGE 2100 j JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT j VOL. 28 NO. 7 2024

Figure 1 The proposed model

Knowledge
Sabotage

General
– H1 Knowledge Hiding

– H2
Evasive
Knowledge Hiding
– H3

– H4 Playing Dumb
Knowledge Hiding
Practical Wisdom
(Phronesis) – H5
Rationalized
Knowledge Hiding
– H6

– H7 Bullying
Knowledge Hiding
H8

Knowledge
Hoarding

Knowledge
Sharing

Source: Created by the author

were adapted from Wong and Law (2002). The pool of items for the other seven practical
wisdom dimensions was developed based on the concepts and literature documented in
the previous section of this paper. The draft instrument was reviewed by a panel of 15
independent experts (one expert at a time) who were asked to review the items in the
context of their dimension definition. Based on the experts’ feedback, adjustments to the
questions were made, and the last several experts had very few, if any, suggestions. This
ensured some degree of face validity of the instrument.
To estimate common method variance (CMV), a marker variable (“In terms of my future
travel plans, I will go on a trip in the next six months”) was inserted in the middle of the
questionnaire as suggested by Zaza et al. (2022). Attention check questions were used
to measure respondents’ engagement and response accuracy. The instrument included
several demographic questions. Appendix presents the final version of the
questionnaire.

VOL. 28 NO. 7 2024 j JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT j PAGE 2101

 3.2 Study design and participants
For the study, 235 individuals were recruited from CloudResearch Connect – a
crowdsourcing platform for online research (https://connect.cloudresearch.com) which
offers access to thousands of highly motivated individuals willing to participate in surveys.
CloudResearch Connect differs from other crowdsourcing platforms, including Amazon’s
MTurk, because it has a rigorous vetting process to approve all members to ensure high
data quality. The use of crowdsourcing platforms for data collection is well established in all
academic domains including knowledge management (Peralta and Saldanha, 2014;
Andreeva and Zappa, 2023; Duan et al., 2023; Serenko, 2019, 2020). The major
advantages of using Connect include respondents’ anonymity, ability to pre-screen
prospective participants and random distribution of participants throughout the country.
The methodological recommendations by Aguinis et al. (2021) for the use of online research
platforms were followed.
G Power 3 statistical power analysis (Faul et al., 2007) was used to establish the minimum
sample size with the following parameters: one-tailed test (because the directional
relationship between practical wisdom and knowledge behavior was already theoretically
determined); estimated construct correlation ¼ 0.25; alpha error probability ¼ 0.01; beta
error probability ¼ 0.80; and H0 correlation ¼ 0. The minimum sample size was 157
observations. To qualify for the study, potential respondents had to be currently employed
full-time for at least two years in an organization that had 10 or more employees and reside
in the USA. A financial incentive of US$4 was offered to those who accurately completed the
survey, which exceeds the US minimum wage and represents a fair compensation. The
study was described in general terms to minimize social desirability bias. The study was
approved by the author’s Institutional Research Ethics Board.

4. Results
4.1 Overview
Of 235 responses, 35 were rejected due to validity issues based on the analysis of attention
check questions (15% rejection rate). Respondents worked in their current organization for
seven years on average, ranging from two to 33 years. About 35% were employed in small
and medium-sized enterprises (10–499 employees) and 65% in large organizations (500þ
employees). About 71.5% worked in private; 28%, in public; and 0.5%, in other types of
organizations. Overall, they had 15 years of full-time work experience, ranging from two to
46 years. They were 37 years old on average (from 22 to 65 years old). About 62% were
men, 37.5% were women and 0.5% did not specify their gender. Overall, they were well-
educated: 14.5% completed high school or less; 17%, an associate degree or some
college; 46%, a bachelor’s degree; 19%, a master’s degree and 3.5%, a doctoral degree.
No differences in the means of practical wisdom and knowledge behavior constructs were
observed based on respondents’ gender, organization type and education level (Table 1).
Table 2 shows that, as people age and gain general and organizational work experience,
they accumulate subject matter expertise. In addition, older workers become more
pragmatic, and the more work experience they have in their current organization, the better
they may read other workers’ emotions and engage in integrative thinking. Table 3 further

Table 1 Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) testing

Construct Gender Organization type (private, public, other) Education level

Practical wisdom Wilks’ lambda ¼ 0.950; p ¼ 0.451 Wilks’ lambda ¼ 0.894; p ¼ 0.359 Wilks’ lambda = 0.779; p = 0.188
Knowledge behavior Wilks’ lambda ¼ 0.976; p ¼ 0.781 Wilks’ lambda ¼ 0.945; p ¼ 0.813 Wilks’ lambda ¼ 0.859; p ¼ 0.602
Source: Created by the author

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Table 2 Wisdom construct correlations
Variable PW MD SME WP EIS EIO EIR SR ER EBR IT

Years at current organization 0.14 0.11 0.18 0.09 0.07 0.19 0.13 0.01 0.08 0.02 0.17
Overall work experience 0.07 0.12 0.18 0.10 0.08 0.01 0.07 0.02 0.04 0.02 0.08
Age 0.04 0.08 0.16 0.16 0.02 0.01 0.00 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.05
Notes:  p < 0.05;  p < 0.01; PW ¼ practical wisdom (second order factor); MD ¼ moral purpose in decision-making; SME ¼ subject
matter expertise; WP ¼ workplace pragmatism; EIS ¼ emotional intelligence – appraisal of self-emotions in the workplace; EIO ¼
emotional intelligence – appraisal of others’ emotions in the workplace; EIR ¼ emotional intelligence – self-regulation of workplace
emotions; SR ¼ self-reflection in the workplace; ER ¼ external reflection in the workplace; EBR ¼ exceeding the bounds of rationality;
IT ¼ integrative thinking
Source: Created by the author

Table 3 Knowledge behavior construct correlations

Variable KSA KHG EKH PDKH RKH BKH KHO KS

Years at current organization 0.11 0.03 0.07 0.07 0.09 0.02 0.03 0.05
Overall work experience 0.27 0.15 0.30 0.20 0.26 0.21 0.00 0.12
Age 0.12 0.05 0.19 0.08 0.12 0.13 0.04 0.13
Notes:  p < 0.05;  p < 0.01; KSA ¼ knowledge sabotage; KHG ¼ general knowledge hiding; EKH ¼ evasive knowledge hiding;
PDKH ¼ playing dumb knowledge hiding; RKH ¼ rationalized knowledge hiding; BKH ¼ bullying knowledge hiding; KHO ¼ knowledge
hoarding; KS ¼ knowledge sharing
Source: Created by the author

reveals that the number of years of overall work experience is negatively associated with all
types of counterproductive knowledge behavior except knowledge hoarding.

4.2 The measurement and structural models

Harman’s (1967) single factor test was done to assess CMV. In two separate analyses, the
first factors captured only 30.3% and 37.4% of the total variance for all practical wisdom
and knowledge behavior items, respectively, which showed that CMV did not affect the
validity of the measurement model. No statistically significant correlations at the 0.01 level
were found between the marker variable and all constructs, which further ruled out CMV.
Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the
measurement and the structural models by means of SmartPLS 4 (Ringle et al., 2022),
which fits well with knowledge management research (Cepeda-Carrion et al., 2019).
Confirmatory tetrad analysis (Gudergan et al., 2008) with the significance level of 0.01
showed that all except two constructs (knowledge hoarding and appraisal of others’
emotions in the workplace) met the criteria for reflective constructs[3]. However, because in
previous research, the knowledge hoarding construct has been traditionally operationalized
as reflective, it was retained as reflective in this study. It was also decided to position
appraisal of others’ emotions in the workplace as reflective because it exhibited a good
level of reliability and to be consistent with the other wisdom constructs. Thus, the entire
measurement model was analyzed in Mode A (composite reflective) (Sarstedt et al., 2016).
The second-order factor (practical wisdom) was also estimated in the reflective mode by
means of the repeated indicator approach. Analysis of heterotrait–monotrait (HTMT) ratio of
correlations (Henseler et al., 2015) showed that a vast majority of values were below 0.6,
and only one value (workplace pragmatism – moral purpose in decision-making) was 0.885,
still below the cut-off point of 0.9. All item loadings were significant at p < 0.001.
Of 88 items included in the initial questionnaire, eight were dropped due to their poor
reliability. Tables 4 and 5 present reliability and validity assessment of the remaining

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 Table 4 Reliability assessment
Item Mean SD ITC Loading Alpha CR AVE

MD1 5.56 1.26 0.52 0.678 0.82 0.829 0.530

MD2 5.76 0.97 0.63 0.762
MD3 5.72 1.04 0.62 0.762
MD4 6.37 0.94 0.53 0.662
MD5 5.93 1.10 0.70 0.822
MD6 5.74 1.26 0.52 0.668
SME1 6.06 0.85 0.69 0.793 0.89 0.888 0.639
SME2 5.95 1.02 0.74 0.819
SME3 5.94 1.05 0.76 0.842
SME4 5.92 1.06 0.66 0.763
SME5 5.77 1.00 0.71 0.811
SME6 6.15 0.88 0.65 0.765
WP1 5.92 1.02 0.49 0.707 0.70 0.723 0.530
WP2 5.68 1.17 0.54 0.794
WP3 6.11 0.87 0.56 0.796
WP4 5.68 1.03 0.37 0.599
EIS1 6.12 0.83 0.80 0.902 0.88 0.884 0.742
EIS2 6.18 0.84 0.75 0.868
EIS3 5.93 1.08 0.65 0.800
EIS4 6.01 0.85 0.76 0.871
EIO1 5.44 1.05 0.80 0.917 0.89 0.925 0.748
EIO2 5.38 1.09 0.79 0.911
EIO3 4.67 1.37 0.66 0.745
EIO4 5.11 1.15 0.77 0.876
EIR1 6.01 1.04 0.86 0.927 0.92 0.925 0.813
EIR2 6.03 1.02 0.87 0.933
EIR3 6.04 1.00 0.83 0.909
EIR4 5.97 1.15 0.72 0.834
SR1 5.60 1.02 0.79 0.860 0.91 0.908 0.685
SR2 5.35 1.38 0.76 0.828
SR3 5.43 1.28 0.76 0.828
SR4 5.62 1.36 0.77 0.846
SR5 5.72 1.11 0.78 0.859
SR6 6.11 1.04 0.60 0.737
ER1 5.10 1.38 0.78 0.856 0.92 0.916 0.704
ER2 5.63 1.23 0.77 0.850
ER3 5.63 1.22 0.79 0.857
ER4 5.19 1.34 0.82 0.875
ER5 5.53 1.40 0.70 0.796
ER6 5.51 1.22 0.71 0.799
EBR1 5.29 1.28 0.70 0.804 0.81 0.891 0.624
EBR2 5.76 1.00 0.56 0.849
EBR3 4.61 1.35 0.63 0.693
EBR4 5.30 1.22 0.64 0.804
IT1 5.10 1.27 0.49 0.616 0.78 0.806 0.533
IT2 5.75 0.89 0.58 0.763
IT3 5.33 1.21 0.52 0.656
IT4 5.98 0.91 0.59 0.803
IT5 5.83 1.05 0.57 0.793
KSA1 1.51 1.13 0.85 0.911 0.97 0.972 0.911
KSA2 1.54 1.23 0.94 0.970
KSA3 1.56 1.14 0.94 0.966
KSA4 1.57 1.26 0.94 0.969
KHG1 1.89 1.31 0.74 0.886 0.87 0.880 0.798
KHG2 1.84 1.12 0.77 0.890
KHG3 1.77 1.07 0.76 0.904
EKH1 1.97 1.50 0.75 0.879 0.93 0.943 0.818
EKH2 1.90 1.59 0.87 0.922
(continued)

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Table 4
Item Mean SD ITC Loading Alpha CR AVE

EKH3 1.98 1.53 0.86 0.920

EKH4 1.82 1.47 0.84 0.896
PDKH1 1.67 1.17 0.74 0.858 0.89 0.892 0.749
PDKH2 1.68 1.13 0.86 0.933
PDKH3 1.78 1.27 0.75 0.856
PDKH4 2.14 1.32 0.66 0.810
RKH1 1.72 1.16 0.73 0.865 0.85 0.854 0.694
RKH2 2.16 1.54 0.74 0.844
RKH3 1.82 1.24 0.81 0.900
RKH4 1.43 0.95 0.52 0.711
BKH1 1.75 1.42 0.82 0.909 0.92 0.936 0.864
BKH2 1.75 1.30 0.82 0.929
BKH3 1.67 1.31 0.88 0.951
KHO1 4.20 1.67 0.57 0.714 0.86 0.903 0.713
KHO2 5.14 1.44 0.82 0.923
KHO3 5.16 1.45 0.84 0.929
KHO4 5.24 1.47 0.62 0.791
KS1 5.61 1.10 0.72 0.835 0.85 0.880 0.627
KS2 5.46 1.19 0.67 0.809
KS3 5.71 1.10 0.77 0.881
KS4 5.71 1.14 0.66 0.816
KS5 5.29 1.23 0.49 0.587
Notes: SD ¼ standard deviation; ITC ¼ corrected item-to-total correlation; Alpha ¼ Cronbach’s alpha;
CR ¼ composite reliability; AVE ¼ average variance extracted
Source: Created by the author

(i.e. final) measures, respectively. Overall, they demonstrate that all items and constructs meet
the reliability and validity criteria (Fornell and Larcker, 1981; Nunnally and Bernstein, 1994).
Bootstrapping was done to assess the statistical significance of the structural relationships.
Confidence intervals indicated that all relationships were significant (i.e. zero was not
included in any confidence intervals). Analysis of t-values further confirmed the significance
of all relationships at p < 0.001. All direct and indirect effects were also statistically
significant. The results revealed that, first, all wisdom dimensions contributed to the overall
construct of practical wisdom, but to different degrees. Subject matter expertise, moral
purpose in decision-making, self-reflection in the workplace and external reflection in the
workplace are the central dimensions while exceeding the bounds of rationality is the least
important one. Second, practical wisdom substantially boosts productive knowledge
behavior such as knowledge sharing (b ¼ 0.59) and suppresses counterproductive
knowledge behavior such as knowledge sabotage and knowledge hiding. Practical wisdom
has the strongest negative impact on playing dumb knowledge hiding (b ¼ 0.50) out of all
counterproductive knowledge behavior constructs. Third, the beta coefficient between
practical wisdom and knowledge hoarding was very strong and statistically significant
(0.54), yet it was positive while it was hypothesized to be negative: in contrast to
expectations, practical wisdom promoted (rather than supressed) knowledge hoarding.
Overall, the results provide strong support for all hypotheses except H7 (see Figure 2).

5. Discussion, recommendations and conclusion

The findings of this study lead to several theoretical and practical implications. With respect
to theoretical insights, first, this study offers a definition of practical wisdom. Based on the
findings, practical wisdom is defined as a set of unique, admirable characteristics – moral
purpose in decision-making, subject matter expertise, workplace pragmatism, emotional
intelligence in the workplace, self-reflection in the workplace, external reflection in the

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 PAGE 2106
Table 5 Construct correlations
Construct MD SME WP EIS EIO EIR SR ER EBR IT KSA KHG EKH PDKH RKH BKH KHO KS

MD 0.728
SME 0.637 0.799
WP 0.679 0.611 0.728
EIS 0.486 0.488 0.603 0.861

j JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT j VOL. 28 NO. 7 2024

EIO 0.323 0.457 0.305 0.380 0.865
EIR 0.523 0.371 0.536 0.569 0.128 0.902
SR 0.616 0.494 0.557 0.373 0.334 0.341 0.828
ER 0.592 0.468 0.443 0.277 0.457 0.273 0.704 0.839
EBR 0.271 0.296 0.334 0.239 0.227 0.338 0.309 0.231 0.790
IT 0.673 0.626 0.550 0.535 0.432 0.468 0.620 0.623 0.319 0.730
KSA 0.363 0.272 0.322 0.303 0.096 0.312 0.222 0.175 0.175 0.244 0.954
KHG 0.417 0.382 0.427 0.451 0.147 0.394 0.242 0.162 0.217 0.369 0.494 0.893
EKH 0.318 0.260 0.356 0.268 0.049 0.316 0.154 0.097 0.090 0.197 0.605 0.485 0.904
PDKH 0.484 0.410 0.465 0.398 0.149 0.421 0.280 0.200 0.241 0.404 0.575 0.724 0.558 0.865
RKH 0.334 0.330 0.363 0.340 0.097 0.359 0.130 0.056 0.198 0.233 0.559 0.633 0.522 0.686 0.833
BKH 0.282 0.243 0.294 0.225 0.005 0.324 0.141 0.041 0.125 0.185 0.597 0.547 0.602 0.576 0.648 0.930
KHO 0.456 0.401 0.406 0.240 0.212 0.235 0.493 0.559 0.217 0.467 0.066 0.144 0.083 0.174 0.105 0.010 0.844
KS 0.488 0.455 0.466 0.418 0.306 0.392 0.416 0.435 0.183 0.544 0.185 0.474 0.197 0.391 0.314 0.183 0.355 0.792
Note: The diagonal elements are the square root of the AVE of a respective construct
Source: Created by the author
Figure 2 The structural model (all beta coefficients are significant at p < 0.001)

Moral Purpose in Knowledge

Decision Making Sabotage

0.18 –0.36 2
R = 13.3%
Subject Matter
Expertise General
0.19 Knowledge Hiding
– 0.46 2
Workplace R = 21.3%
Pragmatism
0.12
Evasive
Knowledge Hiding
Appraisal of Self- –0.32
Emotions in the 2
Workplace 0.14 R = 9.9%

Appraisal of Playing Dumb

Others’ Emotions – 0.50 Knowledge Hiding
0.07
in the Workplace Practical Wisdom 2
(Second-Order R = 24.7%
Self-Regulation of 0.15 Construct) –0.35
Workplace Rationalized
Emotions Knowledge Hiding
0.17
–0.28 2
Self-Reflection in R = 12.3%
the Workplace 0.16
Bullying
Knowledge Hiding
External Reflection 0.06
2
in the Workplace R =7.8%
0.54
0.13 Knowledge
Exceeding the Hoarding
Bounds of
Rationality 0.59 2
R = 28.7%

Integrative Knowledge
Thinking Sharing
2
R = 34.4%

Source: Created by the author

workplace, exceeding the bounds of rationality and integrative thinking – that allow a wise
employee to act for the betterment of all organizational stakeholders. Second, this study
forms the foundation for further empirical inquiries into the nature of practical wisdom.
Presently, many knowledge management scholars and practitioners do not see value in the
concept of practical wisdom because they consider it a hypothetical, elusive and even
deceptive notion devoid of practical utility – and they are right within their own viewpoint.
This Real Impact Research Article challenges this view, however, and shows that it is

VOL. 28 NO. 7 2024 j JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT j PAGE 2107

 possible to conceptualize and measure the practical wisdom of employees and that
practical wisdom guides employee knowledge behavior. It demonstrates that practical
wisdom is a multidimensional construct that may be operationalized and measured like
other well-established knowledge management concepts.
Third, the causal relationships proposed and confirmed in this study are somewhat intuitive
in nature: we cannot imagine a wise employee who sabotages or deceives his/her fellow co-
workers and refuses to help them for the sake of personal gain or ego. At the same time,
these relationships form a scientific theory that explicates why these causal links exist and
how they affect employees’ behavior. Thus, this study shows that it is possible to move from
layman hypothesizing toward scientific theories when dealing with the notion of practical
wisdom and its effects in the workplace.
Fourth, while all dimensions contribute to employee practical wisdom, subject matter
expertise, moral purpose in decision-making, self-reflection in the workplace and external
reflection in the workplace are extremely important from the perspective of knowledge
behavior. Indeed, if we try to quickly imagine a picture of a wise employee who proactively
imparts knowledge to others, a mental portrait of a benevolent expert who understands how
his/her actions impact other workers comes to mind. Fifth, the fact that practical wisdom has
the strongest suppressive impact on playing dumb knowledge hiding (b ¼ 0.50) is not
surprising: again, we cannot imagine a wise organizational member who pretends to be
dumb when interacting with others. At the same time, the magnitude of a positive effect of
practical wisdom on knowledge sharing was even higher (b ¼ 0.59). Interestingly, practical
wisdom facilitates knowledge hoarding. It is possible that wise employees see nothing
wrong with the mere accumulation of work-related knowledge because they do not hide it
from others when it is requested.
Sixth, opportunities for future research are ample. As a starting point, future scholars may
introduce and empirically test additional dimensions of practical wisdom because this study
captured only a small proportion of all available characteristics of a wise worker. Another
critical line of research pertains to exploring the antecedents of practical wisdom. Of
particular interest are personality traits such as the Big Five Model (McCrae and Costa,
1987; Costa and McCrae, 1992), the Hogan Personality Inventory (Hogan and Hogan,
2009) and Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (Millon et al., 2015; Serenko, 2023b).
Additional outcomes of practical wisdom – which may pertain to both traditional and new
organizational constructs such as job satisfaction (Judge et al., 2001), organizational
commitment (Choi et al., 2015), turnover (Judge, 1993; Serenko et al., 2022, 2024) and
quiet quitting (Serenko, 2024) – represent a fruitful line of inquiry.
In terms of practical recommendations, first, managers should realize that possessing
practical wisdom is not limited to a group of select, high-level executives. Instead, every
organizational member may potentially possess practical wisdom which guides his/her
counterproductive and productive knowledge behavior. Second, organizations may
administer the practical wisdom questionnaire presented in this study to their workers and
identify those who score the lowest. Such employees may be further scrutinized to make
sure that they do not engage in knowledge sabotage and knowledge hiding. However,
managers should realize that if the questionnaire is administered non-anonymously, some
respondents may exaggerate their responses to position themselves in a positive light. To
identify these individuals, the practical wisdom instrument may be accompanied by the
social desirability bias and lie scales (Reynolds, 1982; Eysenck et al., 1985) which are
specifically designed to detect such response patterns. Third, organizations should invest
in employee training programs that focus on the development of attributes pertaining to the
practical wisdom dimensions. It is particularly critical to teach workers to consider moral
purpose in decision-making because this is a salient dimension of practical wisdom. Other
training programs should teach employees how to appraise and regulate their workplace
emotions and reflect on their own and others’ workplace functioning.

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Out of many attributes of a successfully adopted management theory, perhaps the most
salient is its intuitiveness: when presented with the theory’s propositions, a manager would
respond, “I think I have always known this, but I am glad that someone has theoretically
framed and empirically supported this premise.” The findings documented in this study are
also intuitive from a manager’s perspective: practically wise workers support others and
refrain from hurting them – an observation that many attentive managers have probably
made after years of experience. The intuitive nature of this conclusion is the key to bringing
the notion of practical wisdom to mainstream knowledge management research and
practice. Presently, there is a growing demand for practically wise workers who can make
wise decisions and help other organizational members realize their full potential. This is
particularly important given the recent changes in the nature of the contemporary workforce
fueled by the Great Resignation (Serenko, 2023a) and quiet quitting (Serenko, 2024) trends
which diminished employee loyalty and productivity.
It is unarguable that the notion of wisdom is a very controversial topic that has both
detractors and supporters. At the root of the debate is the illusive nature of this nonorthodox
concept and the issues surrounding its measurement (Swartwood, 2020). While the line of
research introduced in this Real Impact Research Article cannot solve all the world’s
problems, it may potentially help organizations understand a previously underexplored
facet of their workforce and propose new ways to further improve managerial practices.
However, the jury is still out, and only time will tell whether the ideas expressed in this paper
will create a paradigm shift (Kuhn, 1962) or will eventually wither away.

Notes
1. In addition to conducting a comprehensive literature review, the author contacted several leading
scholars in the domain of wisdom research, and none of them was aware of a comprehensive scale
designed to measure practical wisdom of individual employees.
2. In addition to the appraisal of one’s own and others’ emotions, some emotional intelligence
definitions include the use of emotions to enhance one’s thought. However, in this study, the latter
component is not incorporated as a practical wisdom dimension because a related concept is
captured by the exceeding the bounds of rationality dimension.
3. Confirmatory tetrad analysis states that, when at least 80% of all p-values and confidence intervals
are non-significant, the construct is best operationalized as reflective; otherwise, it is formative.

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Appendix. The questionnaire

Instructions

䊏 You must be currently employed full-time for at least 2 years in an organization that has
10 or more employees.
䊏 Please answer all questions below in the context of the organization in which you are
currently employed full-time.

Pre-screening

䊏 For how many years have you worked in your current organization?
䊏 How many employees does your current organization have?
䊏 Your current organization is: (public, private and other).
Practical wisdom (seven-point Likert-type agree/disagree scale).

Practical wisdom (seven-point Likert-type agree/disagree scale)

Moral purpose in decision-making (MD)

When making decisions in my workplace, I
䊏 MD1. act in the best interests of all organizational stakeholders.
䊏 MD2. take into account the common good of all parties involved.
䊏 MD3. focus on the well-being of other employees, customers, community members,
members of the general public, and other stakeholders.
䊏 MD4. act in an ethical manner.
䊏 MD5. take into consideration the long-term consequences of my actions.
䊏 MD6. eliminate bad faith, personal biases, and prejudice.

Subject matter expertise (SME)

In my workplace, I
䊏 SME1. possess strong factual, conceptual, and procedural knowledge relevant to my
work performance.
䊏 SME2. have accumulated a considerable degree of professional knowledge.
䊏 SME3. have gathered a depth and breadth of subject matter expertise.
䊏 SME4. have experienced and learned from a variety of professional encounters.
䊏 SME5. possess vital organizational knowledge.
䊏 SME6. consider myself a very knowledgeable employee.

Workplace pragmatism (WP)

In my workplace, I
䊏 WP1. always focus on achieving a particular outcome.

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 䊏 WP2. consistently try to act, perform, and engage rather than avoid, procrastinate, and
debate.
䊏 WP3. persistently attempt to accomplish a desirable outcome.
䊏 WP4. consider myself a pragmatic employee.

Emotional intelligence in the workplace – appraisal of self-emotions in the workplace (EIS)

In my workplace, I
䊏 EIS1. have an ability to understand my own emotions.
䊏 EIS2. can sense my own feelings.
䊏 EIS3. always know how I feel.
䊏 EIS4. can read my own emotional state.

Emotional intelligence in the workplace – appraisal of others’ emotions in the workplace (EIO)
In my workplace, I
䊏 EIO1. have an ability to understand my co-workers’ emotions.
䊏 EIO2. can sense my co-workers’ feelings.
䊏 EIO3. always know how my co-workers feel.
䊏 EIO4. can read my co-workers’ emotional state.

Emotional intelligence in the workplace – appraisal of others’ emotions in the workplace (EIR)
In my workplace, I
䊏 EIR1. am able to control my own emotions.
䊏 EIR2. can manage my own emotional state.
䊏 EIR3. can regulate my own feelings.
䊏 EIR4. can suppress my temper if needed.

Self-reflection in the workplace (SR)

In my workplace, I
䊏 SR1. analyze my own work-related experiences to understand my inner state to
improve my capacity to function.
䊏 SR2. deliberately practice internal self-reflection to comprehend my inner state.
䊏 SR3. engage in retrospective self-analysis of workplace encounters.
䊏 SR4. attempt to understand my inner self to avoid future mistakes.
䊏 SR5. explore my functioning and initiate corrective actions if necessary.
䊏 SR6. analyze my previous mistakes and learn from them.

External reflection in the workplace (ER)

In my workplace, I
䊏 ER1. explore, analyze, and evaluate my colleagues’ work-related experiences.
䊏 ER2. learn from my co-workers to improve my workplace functioning.
䊏 ER3. observe the behavior of my co-workers and learn from it.
䊏 ER4. collect and process my co-workers’ experiences.
䊏 ER5. analyze my co-workers’ mistakes not to repeat them in the future.
䊏 ER6. evaluate my co-workers’ knowledge, skills, and abilities.

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 Exceeding the bounds of rationality (EBR)
When making decisions in my workplace, in addition to a rational assessment of the
situation, I rely on my own
䊏 EBR1. intuitions.
䊏 EBR2. personal insights.
䊏 EBR3. hunches.
䊏 EBR4. senses.

Integrative thinking (IT)

When making decisions in my workplace, I
䊏 IT1. feel comfortable facing opposing potential courses of action.
䊏 IT2. develop a good sense of what lies behind a situation before making a decision.
䊏 IT3. look for hidden factors that may affect a decision outcome.
䊏 IT4. keep an open-minded perspective.
䊏 IT5. keep the entire problem in mind while analyzing its individual parts.

About the author

Dr Alexander Serenko is Professor of Management Information Systems in the Faculty of
Business and IT, University of Ontario Institute of Technology and Lecturer in the Faculty of
Information, University of Toronto. Alexander holds a PhD in Management Information
Systems from McMaster University. His research interests pertain to scientometrics,
knowledge management, technology addiction and implicit cognitive processes.
Alexander has published more than 110 articles in refereed journals, including MIS
Quarterly, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, European Journal of
Information Systems, Information & Management, Communications of the ACM and Journal
of Knowledge Management, and his works have received more than 13,000 citations.
Alexander has also won six Best Paper Awards at Canadian and international conferences.
In 2021, he was ranked as one of the most productive and influential academics in the
knowledge management discipline. Alexander is also included in the list of top 1% of the
world’s scientists. Alexander Serenko can be contacted at: a.serenko@utoronto.ca

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