Research On Selection-Based Knowledge Exchange And Creation Process In R&D Teams

The world today is under great economic transition. From 1970s, developed countries started to enter the rapid development period in high-tech as represented by information technology. Knowledge management is the theme of business management. An important feature of this period is the growing role of knowledge. Knowledge as an important part of people and technology has always been the core of economic development. But it was only in recent years that people have further deepened their awareness of the importance of knowledge. China's economic construction is under rapid development, people have pressing need for innovation and want to use knowledge in an effective way.The study of knowledge transfer includes inter-organizational knowledge transfer and knowledge transfer within the organization, while the inter-organizational knowledge transfer has long been the focus of scholars. With further in-depth research, scholars have come to realize that knowledge transfer is through the interaction between knowledge provider and knowledge recipient. Meanwhile, inter-organizational knowledge transfer is also through people's interaction, especially the tacit knowledge. Research on knowledge transfer between knowledge workers within the organization is a foundamental work, it affects the inter-organizational knowledge transfer. It is aware of this that an increasing number of scholars shift their research view to knowledge transfer within the organization. Schoalrs have explored factors that affect knowledge transfer and raised methods and ways to manage knowledge. It can be said that researchers have obtained fruitful foundings in this field. Still, many problems need to be solved. Such that, how knowledge is accumulated through interaction, how key factors affect intra-organizational knowledge transfer, which kind of human behavior should be taken into account when we study knowledge transfer. Taking R&D teams as our research object and considering the features of knowledge exchange, the thesis focus on the micro-process of problem-solving based knowledge exchange.(1)The thesis proves the small-world characteristics of knowledge exchange network which has large clustering coefficient and short path length by taking knowledge exchange network among R&D members in Uniquma as our research object. Uniquma is a R&D department in the United Kingdom. Also, a certain R&D team in China's aviation industry is investigated. By applying social network analysis, we analyze the degree centrality, betweeness of knowledge exchange network and the cliques in real R&D teams. Research results provide not only the practical basis for the simulation of micro-process of knowledge exchange, but also a referential significance for the knowledge management practice in enterprises.(2)By analyzing the behavior of knowledge exchange in teams, the thesis proposes sufficiency index and equity index to measure knowledge exchange and explores the effect of partner selection mechanism. The process of knowledge exchange on small-world network is simulated. Results show that the mechanism of selecting neighbours who have higher knowledge level can promote knowledge exchange, on the other hand, selecting neighbours who have more work experiences results in clustering effect and impede knowledge exchange in organizations. Research results can provide theoretical foundation for establishing high-effective knowledge exchange network in teams.(3)At present, the flow of employers is a popular phenomenon in enterprises and its effect on knowledge exchange in teams has become an significant problem. On this background, this thesis studies the robustness of knowledge exchange performance in R&D teams under the turnover of key employees. By establishing the Watts-Strogatz network model of knowledge exchange in teams, the thesis investigate how the turnover of key employees affects the growth rate of knowledge as well as the adequacy and the equity of knowledge exchange under the four preference of partner selection. Results show that the affection of key employees'turnover on the performance of team's knowledge exchange depends on selection preference. Professional neighbor selection is most favorable for knowledge exchange.(4)This thesis investigates how network structure affects knowledge exchange in teams. After simulating the dynamics of knowledge exchange on four representative networks, namely, scale-free network,small-world network,regular network and random network, we analyze the simulation results. By calculate the growth rate,the variation coefficient and the Moran coefficient of knowledge level, we found that scale-free network structure improves the performance of organization's knowledge exchange.(5)In this thesis, we considered the prisoner's dilemma game on complex network with dynamical link dilution. By investigating the game on three representative networks, namely scale-free network, small-world network and regular network, we found that the introduced dynamical process provides homogenous network with local heterogeneity, which promoted the cooperation level for prisoner's dilemma game on homogenous structured population.Moreover, the best cooperative behavior is obtained at p*.