Motivation, Professional And Technical Capacities And Collaboration, Innovation Relationship Study

Focusing on innovation teams and their members in high-tech firms, this study explores the impact of individual motivation and professional skills on the propensity to cooperation in innovation teams, and discusses the relationship between team cooperation and team innovation. From individual level, it attempts to explain the cultural phenomenon that "if two men ride on a horse, one must ride behind" from the perspective whether power motivation, achievement motivation, affiliation motivation and professional skills have interactive effects on individual's propensity to cooperate with others, and explores how cooperation is influenced by innovation teams composed of members at the same professional skill level but with different motivation types and levels; from team level, it further analyzes the impact of power distance, capacity diversity and team cooperation on team innovation so as to find ways to effectively promote team innovation.The paper includes three steps discussion. First of all, from the past relevant studies, the basic theoretical model and hypothesis are reviewed. Secondly, data were collected from innovation teams in high-tech firms in China by questionnaires, items of which were self-designed through interviews or extracted from classical scales and modified. Finally, with 83 innovation teams in high-tech firms as the valid sample, the theoretical model and hypotheses were analyzed empirically by use of SPSS 13.0. The hypotheses were largely supported. The main results are as follows:1. At present, the phenomenon that "if two men ride on a horse, one must ride behind" is still common in innovation teams in China. Generally speaking, people with strong professional skills usually have a low propensity to cooperate with others, so do people with a high power motivation that prefer competitive environment.2. Individual motivation and professional skills have interactive effects on the propensity to cooperate with others. At the same professional skill level, people with a high achievement motivation or a high affiliation motivation have a higher propensity to cooperate with others, while people with a high power motivation have a lower propensity to cooperate. These three types of motivation and professional skills have significant interactive effects on the propensity to cooperation.3. In innovation teams power distance has significant negative impact on team innovation, i.e. the larger power distance, the worse team innovation. Power distance is a better predictor of team innovation.4. In this empirical study of China's innovation teams, teamwork quality (TWQ) has been found to be indicated by three dimensions instead of six in foreign contexts, which are cohesion, communication and coordination, and mutual support. All the three dimensions have significant positive influence on team innovation.In the end, the paper discussed the above research findings, and pointed out the significance and limitations of the research as well as directions for future research.