The Relationships Between Employee's Social Network,Individual Learning And Creativity

In the face of ever-deepening economic globalization and increasingly competitive market environment,innovation-driven development strategy has become a new engine for China's economic development.Enterprise is an important subject for the implementation of this strategy,and its level of innovation directly reflects the innovation ability of the country.Furthermore,the key to enterprise innovation is employee creativity.Although the current innovation capability of Chinese companies has improved,yet there is still a large gap compared with that of developed countries.The lack of innovative talent has always been an important factor affecting corporate innovation.Therefore,it is of great significance to study how to effectively improve employee creativity in order to improve the competitiveness of enterprises and effectively implement the national innovation-driven development strategy.How to effectively improve the creativity of employees has always been a hot issue that scholars are concerned about.As related research expands,scholars gradually shift focus from the individual factors to the context factors,and social networks as an important way to obtain information have received more and more attention from scholars.A large number of studies about social network have shown that employees located in structural holes can obtain heterogeneous information,which is conducive to creativity.Recent studies have found that employees can obtain information not only through the social networks they directly contact,but also through their contacts' social networks.However,existing research has not systematically explored how structural holes of the team members that the employees contact affect the creativity of the employees.This gap has limited our understanding of the social network's influence on creativity,and it has been unable to effectively help companies to improve the efficiency of employees' use of social networks.In order to fill this research gap,this study based on the social network theory,organizational learning theory,and creativity theory to examine how the structure holes of the employees' connected team members affect employee creativity,and this study also builds a theoretical model about the relationships between employee's social network,individual learning,and creativity.Specifically,this study first explored the impact of structural holes of employees' team members in different contexts on employee's exploratory learning and exploitative learning based on social network theory and organizational learning theory.The structural holes of employees' team members include four different types,they are strongly-tied team members with structural holes in interorganizational network,weakly-tied team members with structural holes in interorganizational network,strongly-tied team members with structural holes in intrateam network,and weakly-tied team members with structural holes in intrateam network.Second,based on the dual pathway to creativity model,we explain the mechanism of employee's exploratory learning and exploitative learning on employee creativity respectively.Finally,in order to examine the mediating role of two types of learning,we explore how the four types of structural holes affect the employee creativity through the employee's exploratory learning and exploitative learning.According to the above analysis,this study attempts to specifically and comprehensively understand the intrinsic mechanism about the effects of the structural holes of employees' team members on employee creativity.Based on questionnaire surveys in three times,this study collects data from 426 employees in 22 high-tech manufacturing companies,and we test the hypotheses via data analysis.The results of this study suggest that,first of all,establishing strong ties with team members who have structural holes in interorganizational network,or establishing weak ties with team members who have structural holes in intrateam network can help employees to improve exploratory learning.On the contrary,establishing weak ties with team members who have structural holes in interorganizational network,or establishing strong ties with team members who have structural holes in intrateam network is not helpful for employees to improve exploratory learning.At the same time,establishing strong ties with team members who have structural holes in interorganizational network is not conducive to employee's exploitative learning,while establishing strong ties with team members who have structural holes in intrateam network is conducive to employee's exploitative learning.Second,employee's exploratory learning and exploitative learning both can promote employee creativity.Finally,the results of exploratory learning's mediating effects show that,employees' strongly-tied team members with structural holes in interorganizational network,and weakly-tied team members with structural holes in intrateam network are both able to have a significant positive impact on employee creativity via exploratory learning.On the contrary,employees' weakly-tied team members with structural holes in interorganizational network,and strongly-tied team members with structural holes in intrateam network both can have a significant negative impact on employee creativity through exploratory learning.In the meantime,the results of exploitative learning's mediating effects suggest that,employees' strongly-tied team members with structural holes in interorganizational network has a significant negative effect on employee creativity through exploitative learning,while employees' strongly-tied team members with structural holes in intrateam network has a significant positive effect on employee creativity through exploitative learning.According to the above analysis,the innovation of this research mainly includes the following four aspects:Firstly,the differences of structural holes in different contexts are found.This study is the first to divide the structural holes of employees' team members into different types based on the tie strength and the network types,and we uncover that the role played by the team members' structural holes will vary according to the contexts,which expands the social networks research.Specifically,this study divides the structural holes of employees' team members into four types,and explains the impact of each type of team members' structural holes on emplyees,which extends the existing research on the social network of employees' contacts.The difference of tie strength between employees and their contacts,and different network types(intrateam and interorganizational network)of strutural holes will lead to different employees' access to information from team members,thus have different effects on employee creativity.Secondly,new drivers are proposed.This study explores the impact of the structural holes of employees' team members on employees' exploratory learning and exploitative learning from the perspective of alters' social networks,which proposes new drivers of individual learning and expands the organizational learning research.Since the process of individual learning is essentially the interaction between the individual and the environment,and the information obtained by employees through different structural holes of team members is distinct,thus,the difference of information exchange will have different effects on the learning behavior of employees.Hence,this study suggests that the structural holes of team members will have different effects on employees' exploratory learning and exploitative learning because of the different information,and the way the team members communicate with employees.Therefore,this study provides a new theoretical explanation for the study of the relationship between social networks and organizational learning.Thirdly,a novel theoretical explanation is offered.This study introduces the dual pathway to creativity model,and provides a new theoretical explanation to the impact mechanism of exploratory learning and exploitative learning on employee creativity.Based on the dual pathway to creativity model,this study suggests that employees' exploratory learning promotes the employee creativity via promoting the cognitive flexibility of employees,while exploitative learning enhances employee creativity by strengthening the cognitive persistence of employees.Although both contribute to the improvement of employee creativity,their specific mechanisms of action are completely different,thereby theoretically enriching the study of the relationship between organizational learning and creativity.Forthly,important mediating mechanisms are found.This study proposes that employees' exploratory learning and exploitative learning are important mediating mechanisms that determine the influence of team members' social networks on employee creativity,which enriches the research about the relationship between social nework and creativity.The extant research on the impact of the alters' social networks on employee creativity does not consider the role of individual learning.Although the social network of team members can provide information,the key to effectively transforming the information into creativity depends on the processing of information by employees.Employees with different learning behaviors may process information in different ways.Therefore,this study strengthens the understanding of the internal mechanisms of the relationship between social networks and creativity by explaining the how each type of team members' structural holes impacts creativity via the two types of learning.This study explores the relationships between the structural holes of employees' team members,employees' exploratory learning and exploitative learning,and employee creativity,which helps us understand the process mechanisms about how the social networks of employees' team members influence employee creativity.This study not only promotes theoretical research on social networks,organizational learning and creativity,but also provides important guiding significance for corporate management practices,and helps employees to inspire creativity by improving the efficiency of using social networks.