Study On The Relationship Between Social Networks And Knowledge Creation In Enterprise R&D Teams

As knowledge becomes the main engine driving business growth, knowledge creation such as developing new technology, new products or new capacity becomes the key factor to build enterprises'competitive advantage. More and more enterprises use R&D teams to do knowledge creation, and achieve significant performance. From the sociological perspective, innovative ideas often arise in interpersonal communication, and the interpersonal networks are seen as channels of resource transfer. The researches of team knowledge creation mainly focus on the impact of leaders, demographic characteristics, team structure, team composition, cooperation or interaction on the team knowledge creation, but the researches on interpersonal relationships in teams are relative rare. Moreover, there is no clear definition of social networks within teams. Therefore, the research on social networks within R&D teams is very necessary and urgent both theoretically and practically.How do the social networks formed by the interpersonal relationships between R&D members impact the team knowledge creation within R&D teams? To answer this question, we combined the"whole network"and the"ego-centric"research approaches, and proposed the measurement of social networks within teams from the perspectives of whole network of teams and the ego-network of formal leaders based on the relevant research. The measurement contains team network density, team network centrality, team structural holes, tie strength between team members, centrality of formal leaders, and structural holes of formal leader. Based on the measurement, and according to the literature exploration of social networks within teams, team knowledge sharing, team knowledge creation, team knowledge integration capability, we proposed 15 hypotheses (including sub-hypothesis). Then we made an investigation with the sample of 46 R&D teams (involving 360 team members) in the Pearl River Delta region, and tested the hypotheses using the Ucinet6.0 and SPSS13.0 analysis softwares and the methods of questionnaire investigation, social network analysis and statistical analysis.Through the empirical study, it is found that advice network density, advice network centrality, advice network structural holes, friendship network structural holes all have inverted U-shaped relationships with team knowledge sharing; the friendship network density is positively associated with team knowledge sharing; and the friendship network centrality are not significantly associated with team knowledge sharing. It is also be found that the tie strength between team members is positively associated with team knowledge sharing; the advice network structural holes of fomal leader, the friendship network centrality of fomal leader, and the friendship network structural holes of fomal leader all have positive relationships with team knowledge sharing; the advice network centrality of fomal leader is not significantly associated with team knowledge sharing. Team knowledge sharing is positively associated with team knowledge creation; and the higher the team knowledge integration capability, the higher degree of the impact of team knowledge sharing on team knowledge creation.We did the research on the team knowledge creation based on the combination of team whole network and the ego-network of formal leader, and expanded and deepened the research on the team knowledge creation. We investigated the social networks within R&D teams, collected the data of each team member. The investigation is certain ground-breaking and difficult, and can make up the lack of research on social networks in the team level. The empirical analysis of the relationship between social networks and team knowledge creation in R&D teams is certain ground-breaking and led to some valuable findings which can offer references to improve the knowledge creation in enterprise R&D teams.