The Research On The Firm's Interpersonal Knowledge Network, Interpersonal Relationship Networks And Their Associations With Employee's Performance

Since the entry into the twenty-first century, the government set the self-innovation, building innovative country as the national major stratigies. The enterprises, however, are the main entities to carry out these stratigies, and the innovation capability is the key point. In the time of knowledge ecomomy, especially for the knowledge-intensive industry, the firms'competences are increasingly relying on their accumulation of knowledge and the capability of learning, leveraging and creating knowledge. But the knowledge activities of organizations will be broken down to the individuals'knowledge activities, or in other words, the efficiency and effectiveness of in'ividuals' knowledge activitivies determine those of the firm's knowledge activities, also determine the firm's innovation capability.Till now, a lot of researches have devoted to studying the influential factors of employees'knowledge activitities. Some researchers focus on the organizational factors'effects, such as the organizational culture, climate, the"ba"theory initiated by Nonaka, the motivation mechanism. Some analyse the influence of characteristics of knowledge on those activities, e.g. the unproveness of knowledge, causal ambiguity and context. Some study from the perspective of individual's psychology, such as the motivation, psychological safety, power and fear. Others study the impact of interpersonal relationships on employee's knowledge activities and performance, such as the strong ties, weak ties, trust and energy. System science argues the structure of system determines its function, therefore these researches only focusing on the individual-level can not help to grasp the collective activities of all the employees. Then some scholars turn their attentions onto the network embedded with employees: the interpersonal relationships network and knowledge network, and also make some achievements: the positon in the knowledge network affects the individual's knowledge creation and performance; The position and structure in the interpersonal relationships network influence the employee's knowledge activities and performance. And these achievements bring about other deeper thinking: what is the relationship between the interpersonal relationships network and knowledge network? How do they utilize their influence on the individual performance jointly, or one serves as intermediate for the other? Furthermore, some scholars divide the interpersonal relationship into other parts: strong ties, weak ties, competence-based trust, benevolence-based trust and energy. So how do these different types of relationships affect the knowledge network, and are these affects identical? Focusing on the interpersonal relationships network, what kind of organizational factors dominate the evolution of the interpersonal relationships network? Besides, the employee's accumulation of knowledge is the premise and foundation of his knowledge activities, but the current knowledge measurements can not avoid the question about one-sidedness, then how can we measure the individual knowledge stock from a comprehensive perspective? What's more, employees play different roles during the process of knowledge transfer, then will the traditional employee evaluation methods be suitable to discriminate these roles accurately? Employing the Social Network Analysis (SNA) and complex network theory, the dissertation attempts to answer these questions discussed above. The major results and innovative points are listed below:1. New method to measure the employees'knowledge stock is proposed, this research demonstrats the different means of accumulating knowledge between the knowledge workers and non-knowledge workersThe firm's accumulation of knowledge and its capabilities of learning, leveraging and creating knowledge is the major source of enterprise's sustainable competitive advantage. The firm's knowledge activities will be broken into the individuals'knowledge activities, and these activities are based on the individual knowledge stock. Many scholars make efforts to measure the knowledge stock, or only focusing on the explicit knowledge, or focusing on other capital embedded with knowledge, but these means can not avoid the question of one-sidedness. Based on the knowledge network, this dissertation proposed one new method to measure knowledge stock, and analysed the means of accumulating knowledge with empirical data, and demonstrated that the knowledge workers'knowledge stock is mainly influenced by the firm-specific tenure, while the non-knowledge workers'knowledge stock by the industry-specific tenure. This result shed a light on the difference between knowledge-intensive firms and labour-intensive firms.2. Different roles of employees are discriminated based on the knowledge networkThe traditional methods to evaluate the key employees based on the performance and significance for the organization are becoming increasingly unsuitable in the time of knowledge economy, especially for the knowledge-intensive industry. As the knowledge network is a major carriage of firm's knowledge, this dissertation discriminated different types of key employees: knowledge source, knowledge bridge and future star, from the perspective of knowledge network, and also stated their properties and the corresponding risk. These key employees'influence on knowledge network is also explored from the perspective of knowledge network resilience.3. Knowledge network serves as an intermediate role between interpersonal relationships network and performanceThe firm's interpersonal relationships network affects the employees'knowledge activities and performance respectively, and the knowledge network influence the individual performance significantly. So will the interpersonal relationships network influence the performance jointly with knowledge network, or will one serve the intermediate role for the other? The research result pointed out that the knowledge network moderates the influence of interpersonal relationships network on performance. The other contribution of this research is that the influence of diversity of knowledge network on performance is demonstrated.4. Different types of interpersonal relationships network have various influence on knowledge networkSome scholars suggest that there are different types of relationships between employees, such as strong ties, weak ties, competence-based trust, benevolence-based trust and energy, and that thse relationships affect the employees'knowledge activities. Will the effect of these different types of relationships on individuals'knowledge activities be identical, or which one has stonger effect? This dissertation demonstrated that the strong ties network, competence-based trust network and energy network influence significantly the knowledge network, while the benevolence-based network has non-significant effect.5. The ways of communication between employees determine the evolution of interpersonal relationships networkA lot of researches prove that the interpersonal relationships network significantly influences the knowledge transfer and performance. There are, however, few studies focusing on the organizational factors that affect the interpersonal relationships network. It is just because we cannot monitor the evolution of interpersonal relationships network all the time, and unable to collect these information for a few times in a certain period of time, by using the survey, which is the main method to collect information of interaction between employees. This dissertation proposed the interpersonal relationship network growing model by employing the methods and thought of modeling of complex network theory. The simulation results of the model were compared with the empirical data. The agreement suggested the model fit well with the real interpersonal relationship network. Then this dissertation explored the influencing factors of interpersonal relationships network. And the extensive simulation results proved that the extent to which the organization encourage the employees to communicate within or across the teams, departments determines the structure of interpersonal relationship network, and also affects the individual's and group's social capital.The practical significance of this dissertation lies in that: the organization can employ the proposed method to measure employee's knowledge stock to find the main means of individuals and the enterprise to accumulate knowledge; and the organization can follow the proposed skill to evaluate the key employees based on the knowledge network, grasp the different roles played by the knowledge workers, and locate the key employees and some means can be made to enhance their organization commitment. As a result of divison of labor, the enterprise is divided into departments, teams, and then there are various visible and invisible boundaries which hamper the interactions between employees. Many employees only make acquaintance with those of the focal department or team, and have few chances to communicate across departments or organizations. The demonstration that the knowledge network is affected by interpersonal relationships network, provide guideline for the management practice. The manager can expand the range of individual friends to enhance the amount of friends that he/she can turn to for help. The other result of this research that the ways of communication determine the structure of interpersonal relationships network, also provide the management practice with practical objects. The organization can focus on encouraging the intra-department and inter-department communication. The managers should create chances for the intra-department and inter-department communication between employees. And for the individuals, they should take the initiate activity to communicate with others of different departments, with the superiors. What's more, the demonstration that strong ties network, competence-based trust network, energy network influence the knowledge network, shows that the organization can help the individuals expand the range of friends, and also help them optimize their structure of acquaintances, and enhance the quality of relationships.