Knowledge Exploration And Exploitation:the Impacts Of Knowledge Sourcing And Work Group Climates

Firms have long recognized organizational knowledge as a primary means of building competitive advantage. Benefits can be drawn by balancing between exploiting existing knowledge assets and exploring new knowledge. As the use of knowledge management systems continues to expand, understanding the effects of the knowledge sourcing practices of individuals on their exploration and exploitation behaviors becomes important. Motivated by this general question, this dissertation intends to identify different types of knowledge sourcing in companies and investigate their influence on the behavior of individuals.After reviewing previous literature on knowledge sourcing, a systemic understanding of the different types of knowledge sourcing is found to be limited. Based on organizational learning literature, two general types of knowledge sourcing are identified, namely, tacit and explicit knowledge sourcing. Furthermore, according to knowledge ambiguity theory and knowledge creation theory, the typology of knowledge sourcing is classified into four subtypes:socialization-based, case-based, archive-based, and standard-based knowledge sourcing. Accordingly, the current study attempts to explore the distinct effects of knowledge sourcing on the exploration and exploitation behaviors (i.e., solution innovation and solution reuse) of individuals.Further, theoretically, group climate has long been proposed to play an important role in shaping the behavior of employees. Practically, group level climate is relatively more manageable for managers than firm-level overarching culture, and thus, it can provide rich implications for organizations. Therefore, based on the competing value model, this study aims to develop a comprehensive understanding of the underlying mechanisms of knowledge sourcing by involving flexibility orientation vs. control orientation and then building a cross-level model. In particular, the two group climates are proposed to not only affect solution innovation and solution reuse directly, but also to moderate the effects of knowledge sourcing types.A survey was conducted in the context of knowledge workers in four companies in Mainland China. A total of616valid responses were collected to test the research model. The Partial Least Squares (PLS) method was employed to test individual-level effects in the research model, and Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) was used to examine the cross-level effects of group climates. Three main findings were derived from the data analysis. First, results supported our knowledge sourcing typology that different types of knowledge sourcing had distinct effects on solution innovation and reuse. In particular, tacit and explicit knowledge sourcing were proposed as second-order formative constructs, and the subtypes of knowledge sourcing were reflectively measured as first-order constructs. The results efficiently supported the second-order structure. Furthermore, tacit knowledge sourcing was found to have positive effects on solution innovation only, whereas explicit knowledge sourcing was strongly associated with solution reuse. Second, the results of cross-level analysis indicated that group climates exhibited distinct main effects. In particular, control orientation directly increased solution reuse, whereas flexibility orientation directly resulted in solution innovation. Third, cross-level moderating effects demonstrated that flexibility orientation enhanced the relationship between tacit knowledge sourcing and solution innovation, whereas control orientation strengthened the effects of explicit knowledge sourcing on solution reuse.