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Informal Knowledge Governance Within Cross-functional Project Teams

Posted on:2017-08-06Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:J J ChengFull Text:PDF
GTID:1319330515465632Subject:Management Science and Engineering
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Cross-functional project teams employ knowledge process to enhance competitive advantages.The knowledge process is an ongoing collective process through social interaction among team members.Thus,there are many recurrent barriers at socio-relational level,such as low trust and infrequent interaction within cross-functional project teams.With respect to those barriers,this dissertation will use knowledge governance approach to address them and knowledge governance includes formal and informal governance.Therein,the informal knowledge governance is considered to be an effective approach.Informal knowledge governance overcomes those barriers through the deployment of governance mechanisms at team level.However,investigating knowledge governance mechanisms solely at team level will establish an incomplete picture.However,neglecting the research of informal governance at individual level will results in vague and imprecise ideas about team level governance mechanism as the knowledge process comes from the individual intrinsic motivation-based behaviors,.This necessitates the individual level research.Moverover,the interaction process between informal knowledge governance mechanisms and knowledge practices is a complex socialization process which is manifested by social factors.Therefore,informal governace is unable to influence knowledge practices directly and the process should be configured by a balancing and flexible governance implementation way.In summary,this dissertation will study the informal knowledge governance mechanisms within cross-functional project teams at team level,individual level and cross-level separately.The study at team level focuses on exploring the influence of informal knowledge governance mechanisms on knowledge integration.Based on social capital theory,the informal knowledge governance mechanisms are identified as three dimensions: interaction mechanism,trust mechanism and cognition mechanism.Then,some hypotheses of the influence of the three dimensions on knowledge integration are proposed.At last,the semi-structured interview combined with questionnaire-based survey is adopted to test the hypotheses.The research results find that the informal knowledge governance mechanisms have a positive effect on knowledge integration.Based on the team level research results,this dissertation further explores the deployment process of informal knowledge governance mechanisms at individual level.This study reveals the deployment process through exploring the influence of knowledge leadership on knowledge sharing and the role of social capital to.Then,some hypotheses are proposed and questionnaire-based survey is adopted to collect data to test the hypotheses.The research results indicate that social capital plays a mediating role between knowledge leadership and knowledge sharing.In order to improve the deployment of informal knowledge governance mechanisms,the study at cross-level focuses on relational embeddedness used as the deployment way of governance mechiansms.Based on previous literature,this study explores the effect of informal governance mechanisms on knowledge sharing and the role of relational embeddedness.Then,some hypotheses are proposed and the questionnaire-based survey is used to collect data to test the hypotheses.The research results demonstrate that relational embeddedness plays a mediating role between informal knowledge governance mechanisms and knowledge sharing.The introduction of social capital theory extends knowledge governance to social level and enriches knowledge governance theory.This dissertation explores informal knowledge governance at various levels.It will give a direction for knowledge leaders in cross-functional project teams to govern knowledge practices at different level to improve the deployment of informal knowledge governance mechanisms.
Keywords/Search Tags:Cross-functional project teams, Informal knowledge governance mechanisms, Social capital, Knowledge leadership, Knowledge integration
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