PLACEMENT COMPETITION AND KNOWLEDGE HIDING BEHAVIOUR AMONG MBA STUDENTS AT DELHI SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, DTU

Abstract

This study investigates knowledge hiding behaviour among MBA students at Delhi School of Management (DSM), Delhi Technological University (DTU), during the placement season of 2025-26. Knowledge hiding, defined as the intentional withholding of requested knowledge (Connelly et al., 2012), has been well-studied in workplace settings but remains largely unexamined in pre-professional educational contexts in India. The DSM-DTU placement environment, having a batch of approximately 300+ students competing for a campus placement rate of only 30 to 40 percent, creates conditions of acute information scarcity and competitive pressure that make it a particularly compelling site for this inquiry. A qualitative exploratory design was adopted, grounded in an interpretivist paradigm. Twelve second-year MBA students were selected through purposive sampling to reflect diversity in gender, specialisation, geographic background, work experience, and placement outcome. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted in Hinglish between December 2025 and March 2026 and analysed using Braun and Clarke's (2006) six-phase thematic analysis framework, yielding five overarching themes. The findings demonstrate that perceived zero-sum competition over scarce placement seats served as the primary trigger for hiding behaviour, with students engaging in rapid, real-time competitive threat assessments before deciding how much to disclose. All three forms of hiding identified by Connelly et al. (2012), namely evasive hiding, playing dumb, and rationalized hiding, were present, alongside a contextually distinctive variant involving deliberate misinformation about a company's selection process. Information sharing was not uniformly withheld but organised across a three tier architecture of trust, with unrestricted exchange within close inner circles and progressively restricted disclosure toward acquaintances. Institutional factors also played a co-producing role: the placement cell's opacity in communicating process information modelled information restriction as normal behaviour, while senior-junior mentoring relationships transmitted competitive norms intergenerationally. Despite the rationalisations enabling hiding, participants reported residual guilt, retaliatory cycles, cognitive dissonance, and lasting reputational consequences, suggesting that hiding behaviour is neither psychologically costless nor strategically fixed. The study contributes to the knowledge hiding literature by extending Connelly et al.'s typology to the MBA placement context, introducing the three-tier information sharing architecture as an analytical concept, and identifying structural network exclusion as a distinct mechanism of informational inequality. Practically, it recommends greater transparency in placement cell communications, the creation of universally accessible interview experience repositories, equitable allocation of senior mentoring, and pre season pedagogical engagement with competitive information ethics. These interventions aim not to eliminate competition but to ensure it unfolds within a more equitable and transparent informational environment.