If you've ever shared an idea only to hear it repeated by someone else or had another person take credit for your work, David Zweig knows exactly what you're talking about.
The management professor at the University of Toronto and expert in workplace deviance recalls something similar playing out during a work meeting. A colleague said something without getting a response, only to have it repeated later by someone else who got everyone's attention - but there was no acknowledgement of who said it first.
The phenomenon is known as knowledge theft, and it involves intentionally claiming unjustifiable ownership of somebody else's contributions, including ideas and work products such as presentations, systems or solutions to a business problem.
"I noticed that this happened repeatedly," says Zweig, a professor of organizational behaviour and human resources in the department of management at U of T Scarborough and the Rotman School of Management. "So, I started paying attention to how people did or did not credit the work of others. Although this notion of knowledge theft is widely recognized in the popular press, there was very little research on this in our field.
"That got me interested in the impact of being a victim of knowledge theft."
