Behaviour File 04 · The research behind Knowledge Island
Who keeps what they know, and why.
Updated 5 October 2026
We tend to blame the person who keeps knowledge to themselves. A 2022 study points somewhere less comfortable: at how safe it feels to share.
Where people felt safe to take interpersonal risks, they held back less of what they knew.
Zada and colleagues studied knowledge hoarding at work, and found psychological safety was the link between how people were led and how much they kept to themselves.
It’s part of the published research behind a pattern in the KOZMO model called Knowledge Island.
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Source: Zada et al. (2022), Frontiers in Psychology, open access at pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9115108.