Determinants of group effectiveness: The effect of group learning and knowledge conversion of the relationship between group stewardship and group effectiveness

This dissertation examines how group stewardship influences group learning, knowledge conversion processes and on group effectiveness in a large engineering and manufacturing firm. Knowledge, skills, and expertise reside in peoples' head. Business managers that frequently rely on knowledge management systems often fail to manage these domains. This dissertation investigates an integrative research framework based on Chang and Groesbeck's (2004) group learning and knowledge conversion model and empirically tests the processes in relation to group stewardship (antecedent) and group effectiveness (outcome). Three research questions are examined: (1) How does group stewardship affect group learning and knowledge conversion? (2) How does knowledge conversion affect group learning? (3) How do group learning and knowledge conversion affect group outcomes?; 787 individual members and supervisors from 75 workgroups in the participating organization were surveyed. A total of 635 usable questionnaires from 73 workgroups were received. Factor analysis, discriminant validity analysis and structural equation model analysis were used to analyze the research model. The findings confirmed certain hypotheses that were tested in prior research. Group stewardship is positively correlated to group learning and knowledge conversion, while group learning and knowledge conversion are positively correlated to group effectiveness. Knowledge conversion does affect group learning; they are strongly correlated. Undoubtedly, more investigations are needed to pursue further understanding of the implications of the four group learning processes and four knowledge conversion practices.