Knowledge Acquisition And Absorption:the Effects Of Within And Outside-group Communication Network On Individual Creativity

Creative employees, by exercising their creative minds, help organizations improve products, processes and services, which leads to a higher level of organizational efficiency. These creative people make it possible for organizations to survive and thrive in a changing environment. They are the source of organizations’ sustainable competitive advantage. Theoretical studies concerning creativity have shifted its focus from a characteristics-creativity logic to a context-creativity one, laying more stress on how social antecedents affect one’s creativity. Among the latter, social network research is quite popular. According to Amabile’s componential view of creativity, one’s creative performance is related to his domain relevant knowledge, creativity relevant skills and task motivation. While if we take a process view toward creativity, it’s related both with the information one is able to acquire, and with how much that piece of information is absorbed. An individual’s social network characteristics (embeddedness characteristics, e.g., centrality; structural or role characteristics, e.g., broker, consultant) influence one’s ability to acquire knowledge outside the team as well as its absorption within the team, therefore, such characteristics will also exert influence on one’s domain relevant knowledge and creativity relevant skills, and eventually on one’s creativity. In this regard, current study divided an individual’s social network in two parts based on his work group: Outside the group, our focus was on how an individual was able to acquire and integrate information; within the group, the focus was on how an individual was able to absorb the knowledge and implement creative ideas. To be creative, an employee should not only acquire heterogeneous knowledge from outside group, but also share and absorb the knowledge within their work-groups. Therefore, individuals who occupy different positions in the within-and outside-group work-related communication networks, will have different opportunities and abilities to acquire and absorb knowledge, thus displaying different levels of creativity. Arguably, we hypothesize that, first, employees with strong outside-group star characteristics will have more opportunities and abilities to acquire heterogeneous knowledge, and thus display high level of creativity; however, if the employees also serve as the outside brokers or consultants, the positive relationship between external stars and creativity will be weakened because of the increasing costs of acquiring and processing that information; second, employees with strong inside-group star characteristics will have more opportunities and abilities to elaborate the knowledge within group, and thus demonstrate high level of creativity; moreover, if the employees also serve as the outside brokers or consultants, the positive relationship between internal stars and creativity will be strengthened because these roles introduce more amount of heterogeneous knowledge. UCINET was used to calculate social network data. STATA 10.0 was used to conduct cluster regression analysis. Results based on the data of 164 employees from 34 departments of a high-technology firm, in which employees reported their work-related communication network and their department heads assessed their creativity, confirmed our theory and induced hypotheses. The current study contributed to the social side of creativity research in two ways:(1) By integrating strong-tie and weak-tie arguments, the current study presented a more comprehensive picture of the interactions between social network antecedents and creativity performance; (2) By taking an acquisition-absorption view, the current study enriched the social side of creativity literature. Thoughts about this study’s limitations and its implications for management practice were shared at the end.