Network structure, organizational learning culture, and employee creativity in system integration companies: The mediating effects of exploitation and exploration
Introduction
With intense competition in today’s businesses, employees’ individual creativity has become an essential factor in enhancing an organization’s competitiveness and performance. Therefore, organizational cultures and creativity-enhancing structures have become paramount. Guilford (1950) stressed the importance of creativity and argued that its study is rooted in psychology. Since then, research on creativity has been conducted in several disciplines. Early studies tended to focus on creativity as an individual trait. However, investigations have now shifted to how contextual factors affect an individual’s creativity (Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003). In this paper, we studied contextual factors of creativity that have not received as much attention: social network structure and organizational learning culture.
Because of the development of digital IT devices (e.g., smart phones), we live in a smaller world in which information spreads rapidly around the globe (Lazer & Friedman, 2007), and people now recognize the inefficiency of working or studying alone. As the value of knowledge exchange through organizational networks has received more attention, researchers have begun to identify social network parameters that shape creativity in the workplace (Burt, 2004). Acknowledging that cognitive limits and biases may constrain creativity, studies have examined employees’ social networks as possible sources of knowledge and creativity (Zhou, Shin, Brass, Choi, & Zhang, 2009).
Although the need to enhance creativity through the efficient management of an organization’s network structure has increased and study culture has become more common, little research has been conducted in this area. Therefore, our research questions are as follows:
- 1.
Can we maximize individual creativity according to an individual’s working style by adjusting the network structure at the organizational level?
- 2.
Does organizational learning culture affect creativity by influencing an individual’s working style?
To address these questions, we carried out an integrated research study on individual creativity, including organizational learning culture and network structures. Our first purpose was to empirically analyze how we should design the network structure in an organization to increase individual creativity according to individual working styles. We used the concepts of centrality and structural holes as the knowledge network structure with respect to the social network, and used exploitation and exploration as individuals’ working styles. Secondly, we analyzed whether organizational learning culture influenced individual working styles and creativity. Finally, we confirmed the multidimensional relationship of centrality and structural holes as the knowledge network structure variables with organizational culture, exploitation and exploration, and individual creativity. We also confirmed the validity of the hypotheses based on structural model verification, which describes how each factor relates to the others.
This study is presented as follows: In Section 2, we discuss the theoretical background and existing literature regarding individual creativity, exploitation, exploration, network structure, and organizational learning culture. In Section 3, we suggest a research model based on the theoretical background and propose a set of hypotheses. Section 4 presents the empirical evaluation of the research model and verifies it through the analysis of the research results. Section 5 addresses the limitations of the research and directions for future research.
Section snippets
Individual creativity
Guilford (1950) argued that the study of creativity is rooted in psychology. Creativity researchers have made an effort to understand why some individuals are more creative than others, and their studies have focused on the cognitive and motivational processes that explain individual differences in creativity (Perry-Smith, 2006), a complex concept that has been defined in several ways (Shalley, Gilson, & Blum, 2000). Typically, it is defined as an idea that is both novel and useful, such as the
Research model and hypotheses
We first developed an individual model comprised of contextual factors (degree centrality, structural holes, and organizational learning culture) and working styles (exploitation and exploration; Fig. 1). This model assumes that degree centrality and structural holes have positive effects on individual creativity through the mediating effects of exploitation and exploration. Moreover, the model presumes that organizational learning culture influences individual creativity, either directly or
Data collection
The purpose of this study was to test an individual creativity model. Because creativity is important in all aspects of information technology (IT) development, we surveyed members of proposal project teams in the largest system integration (SI) companies in South Korea. SI companies conduct business by integrating, operating, maintaining, and repairing customers’ systems. They submit proposals to clients, who review them before selecting the firm most suitable for their needs. Due to this
Concluding remarks
This study investigated the: (1) effect of network structure and organizational learning culture on the work styles of exploitation and exploration; (2) direct influence of each on individual creativity, and (3) mediating effect of work styles on individual creativity. We found that most variables included in the model positively affected individual creativity. However, neither degree centrality nor structural holes had significant effects on exploitation. Degree centrality did significantly
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2009-342-B00015).
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