Elsevier

Computers in Human Behavior

Volume 42, January 2015, Pages 167-175
Computers in Human Behavior

Network structure, organizational learning culture, and employee creativity in system integration companies: The mediating effects of exploitation and exploration

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.10.026Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We introduce individual social network at the group level into a creativity model.

  • We show how firm can improve individual creativity depending on the working style.

  • We show that exploitation and exploration positively affect individual creativity.

  • We show that formation of learning culture positively affects the working style.

  • We show that degree centrality influence exploration, but structural holes do not.

Abstract

To maximize employee performance in today’s increasingly competitive environment, companies must enhance individual creativity through the effective management of organizational network structures and learning cultures. This study is an empirical analysis of how firms should design these structures and improve individual creativity according to employees’ working styles. We propose a research model that delineates the effect of organizational learning culture on working styles and creativity. For organizational social network structures, we measured degree centrality and structural holes. Employees’ working styles were represented as either “exploitation” or “exploration.” To validate the model, we collected questionnaires from 137 individual members of 25 recently organized teams in several large system integration companies in South Korea, analyzing the data using a structural equation model. We found that most constructs, with the exception of social network structure, positively influenced individual creativity. With respect to organizational network structure, degree of centrality had a significant effect on both 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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      Exploitation and exploration have been common themes in recent studies looking at organizational adaptation to environmental changes (Gupta et al., 2006a, 2006b). Theories regarding exploitation–exploration are potentially useful for understanding the creative process because they incorporate past success as a factor in the propensity to explore new ideas (Audia and Goncalo, 2007; Hahn et al., 2015). Lazer and Friedman (2007) argued that exploitation is related to how information diffusion influences performance, whereas exploration is related to information diversity's effects on performance.

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