Exploring Influence of Network Structure, Organizational Learning Culture, and Knowledge Management Participation on Individual Creativity and Performance: Comparison of SI Proposal Team and R&D Team

네트워크 구조와 조직학습문화, 지식경영참여가 개인창의성 및 성과에 미치는 영향에 관한 실증분석: SI제안팀과 R&D팀의 비교연구

Recently, firms are operating a number of teams to accomplish organizational performance. Especially, ad hoc teams like proposal preparation team are quite different from permanent teams like R&D team in the sense of how the team forms network structure and deals with organizational learning culture and knowledge management participation efforts. Moreover, depending on the team characteristics, individual creativity will differ from each other, which will lead to organizational performance eventually. Previous studies in the field of creativity are lacking in this issue. So main objectives of this study are organized as follows. First, the issue of how to improve individual creativity and organizational performance will be analyzed empirically. This issue will be performed depending on team characteristics such as ad hoc team and permanent team. Antecedents adopted for this research objective are cultural and knowledge factors such as organizational learning culture, and knowledge management participation. Second, the network structure such as degree centrality, and structural hole is used to analyze its influence on individual creativity and organizational performance. SI (System Integration) companies are facing severely tough requirements from clients to submit very creative proposals. Also, R&D teams are widely accepted as relatively creative teams because their responsibilities are focused on suggesting innovative techniques to make their companies remain competitive in the market. SI teams are usually ad hoc, while R&D teams are permanent on an average. By taking advantage of these characteristics of the two kinds of teams, we will prove the validity of the proposed research questions. To obtain the survey data, we accessed 7 SI teams (74 members), and 6 R&D teams (63 members), collecting 137 valid questionnaires. PLS technique was applied to analyze the survey data. Results are as follows. First, in case of SI teams, organizational learning culture affects individual creativity significantly. Meanwhile, knowledge management participation has a significant influence on Individual creativity for the permanent teams. Second, degree centrality Influences individual creativity significantly in case of SI teams. This is comparable with the fact that structural hole has a significant impact on individual creativity for the R&D teams. Practical implications can be summarized as follows: First, network structure of ad hoc team should be designed differently from one of permanent team. Ad hoc team is supposed to show a high creativity in a rather short period, implying that network density among team members should be improved, and those members with high degree centrality should be encouraged to show their Individual creativity and take a leading role by allowing them to get heavily engaged in knowledge sharing and diffusion. In contrast, permanent team should be designed to take advantage of structural hole instead of focusing on network density. Since structural hole can be utilized very effectively in the permanent team, strong arbitrators' merits in the permanent team will increase and therefore helps increase both network efficiency and effectiveness too. In this way, individual creativity in the permanent team is likely to lead to organizational creativity in a seamless way. Second, way of Increasing individual creativity should be sought from the perspective of organizational culture and knowledge management. Organization is supposed to provide a cultural atmosphere in which Innovative idea suggestions and active discussion among team members are encouraged. In this way, trust builds up among team members, facilitating the formation of organizational learning culture. Third, in the ad hoc team, organizational looming culture should be built such a way that individual creativity can grow up fast in a rather short period. Since time is tight, reasonable compensation policy, leader's Initiatives, and learning culture formation should be done In a short period so that mutual trust is built among members quickly, and necessary knowledge and information can be learnt rapidly. Fourth, in the permanent team, it should be kept in mind that the degree of participation in knowledge management determines level of Individual creativity. Therefore, the team ought to facilitate knowledge circulation process such as knowledge creation, storage, sharing, utilization, and learning among team members, which will lead to team performance. In this way, firms must control knowledge networks in permanent team and ad hoc team in a way mentioned above so that individual creativity as well as team performance can be maximized.