Research On The Relationship Among Formal Network And Informal Networks,Innovative Capabilities And Organizational Performance

With the development of science and technology,employees in an organization can obtain a variety of information from the internal network and external network of the organization.With the rapid flow of various kinds of information,the efficiency of communication between people has been improved.Some organizations can obtain valuable information from these information for innovative capability,while some organizations cannot obtain valuable information from these information,which intensifies the fierce competition among enterprises in the market.For the information related to the core technology,each enterprise tries formulate the strictest confidentiality mechanism and applies for patent protection,so that the enterprise can monopolize the core technology to win the competitive advantage in the market competition.Therefore,the cost of acquiring core technology from the outside of the organization becomes very high,some of which are too high for the enterprise to bear.Therefore,entrepreneurs gradually begin to pay attention to the creativity of employees within the organization.In order to stimulate the creativity of employees in the organization,some enterprises have carried out organizational structure reform,hoping to improve the innovative capability of the organization by changing the organizational structure.More innovative enterprises adopt network-based organizational structure,and encourage employees to use the resources of informal networks for innovative capability.At the same time,these enterprises also hope to get theoretical guidance.In theory,from the perspective of the social network theory,scholars regard the formal organizational structure as a formal network,and the informal relationships among members within an organization as informal networks.Scholars have summarized these studies and found that the conclusions of the research on the relationship between advice networks and innovative capability were inconsistent.Therefore,they called for further research on the relationship between advice networks and innovative capability.Scholars who studied the relationship between formal networks and innovative capability tended to ignore the impact of informal networks on formal networks,while those who studied the relationship between informal networks and innovative capability tended to ignore the impact of formal networks on informal networks.As for the research phenomenon that the studies of formal network and informal network were separated,scholars called for future research to study both formal network and informal network at the same time,and to study the impact of interaction between formal networks and informal networks.Although the promotion of innovation capability is conducive to the improvement of organizational performance,scholars divide innovation capability into incremental innovative capability and radical innovative capability.Then,when an organization only develops incremental innovative capability or only develops radical innovative capability,does it have the same impact on organizational performance as developing incremental innovative capability and radical innovative capability at the same time? These problems need to be further analyzed by scholars.Therefore,the urgent problems to be solved are: what is the relationship between the advice giving and innovative capability,what are the mechanisms and conditions for the impact of advice giving on innovative capability? And how the interplay between formal network and informal networks affect innovative capabilities? What is the mechanism of the impact of the interplay between formal networks and different informal networks on innovative capabilities? What is the impact of environmental uncertainty on the relationship between the interplay between formal network and different informal networks and innovation capabilities?How do providing support in formal networks and providing assistance in informal networks affect the relationship between innovative capabilities and organizational performance?However,the existing literature is not enough to provide a systematic and satisfactory theoretical analysis of those urgent problems.In order to solve these problems,we analyzed them and put forward research hypotheses based on knowledge-based view,resource preservation theory,complex system theory and social network theory respectively.In order to test the hypotheses,we contacted the enterprises involved in management innovation through experts in the team,and asked the employees who involved in management innovation to fill in the questionnaires to collect data.First,before the distribution of questionnaires,we used the method of literature review to find the scales needed by this research from high-quality journals,let the members in our team translate the English scales into Chinese scales,and then translate the Chinese scales into English scales.After comparing the differences,we revised the scales repeatedly to translate the scales.After obtaining the initial questionnaire,MBA students were invited to conduct a pre survey,and the managers in the enterprise were asked to check the expressions of the scales,so that the expression in the questionnaire was consistent with that of employees in the enterprise.After several modifications to the questionnaire,a formal questionnaire was formed.Secondly,we contacted the enterprise through the network resources accumulated by experts in our team all the year round.Members in our team went to the companies to distribute the questionnaires and instructed the employees in the organization to fill in the questionnaires.After the participants completed the questionnaire,our members took back the questionnaires and put them into the questionnaire bags for storage.Then,the data in the questionnaire is entered into excel by manual input.When analyzing the data,it was converted into the data that could be processed by the corresponding software for analysis.Through social network analysis,linear regression,polynomial regression and other research methods to test the relevant hypotheses,the conclusion is as follows.First,the relationship between advice giving and innovative capability is studied.It is found that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between advice giving and innovative capability.Knowledge exchange and combination plays a mediating role between advice giving and innovative capability.The findings showed that contextual ambidexterity moderates the indirect effect of advice giving on innovative capability through knowledge exchange and combination.When contextual ambidexterity is high,workers engage in more knowledge exchange and combination for the team at intermediate levels of advice giving,the indirect effect of advice giving at low levels and at high levels exist.When contextual ambidexterity is low,there is no indirect effect of advice giving at any level.Second,the interplay between formal and advice networks has a positive effect on incremental innovative capability;the interplay between formal and friendship networks has a positive effect on radical innovative capability.The transfer of knowledge sharing will mediate the relationship between the interplay between formal and advice networks and incremental innovative capability;the creation of knowledge sharing will mediate the relationship between the interplay between formal and friendship networks and radical innovative capability.The environmental complexity moderate the relationship between the transfer of knowledge sharing and incremental innovative capability such that the relationship will be stronger for organization with more environmental complexity.The environmental dynamism moderate the relationship between the creation of knowledge sharing and radical innovative capability such that the relationship will be stronger for organization with more environmental dynamism.Third,compared with lower state of the balanced innovation,the organizational performance is higher when the balance is in higher state.Providing support in formal networks helps to transform the incremental innovation into organizational performance.Providing assistance in informal networks helps to transform the radical innovation into organizational performance.The interaction between providing support and providing assistance moderate the positive impact of the balanced innovation on organizational performance,the impact is stronger at higher levels than that at lower levels.The theoretical contributions of this study are as follows: First,the inverted U-shaped relationship between advice giving and innovative capability is analyzed clearly.Employees provide advice mainly through knowledge exchange and combination to improve innovative capability.When contextual ambidexterity is high,it is conducive to promote employees to improve the quality of advice,reduce the redundant knowledge,so as to improve the knowledge exchange and combination within the organization to promote the improvement of innovative capability.Second,in response to Mc Evily's call for the study of formal and informal networks,this paper studied how organizations used the interplay between formal networks and informal networks to improve their innovative capabilities.Using knowledge sharing and environmental uncertainty,this paper further explores the mechanism and contingency conditions of the interplay between formal network and informal network on innovative capabilities,and refines the theory of the impact of interplay between formal network and informal network on innovative capabilities.It is an important contribution to the theory of complex system theory.Third,the concept of providing support in formal networks is proposed from the perspective of social network,which enriches the theory of prosociality in organizations.This paper studied the impact of incremental innovation and radical innovation on organizational performance,and adjusted it into an organic balance view reflecting the difference between incremental innovation and radical innovation.This paper tested the impact of incremental innovation,radical innovation and balanced innovation on organizational performance with the providing support in formal networks and the providing assistance in informal networks,which were the refinement of contingency conditions for the transformation of incremental innovation and radical innovation into organizational performance.The practical enlightenments obtained from the research conclusions are as follows: First,in order to improve the innovative capability,the organization should strengthen the construction of contextual ambidexterity,encourage employees to carry out self-management,and create a working atmosphere of participation and support.Second,the organization should establish a knowledge sharing platform and actively cultivate the ability of knowledge sharing among its workers in order to continuously improve the innovative capability of enterprises.Third,enterprises should formulate different policies according to the environmental uncertainty to encourage employees to share different knowledge to improve their innovative capability.Fourth,enterprises can establish the atmosphere,rules and regulations that are conducive to promoting employees to provide support by using formal network and assistance by using informal network,and give appropriate rewards to members who are willing to provide help to colleagues.