Research On The Impact Of Task Interdependence On The R&D Team Innovation Performance

Since December 2013, I have been participating in the natural science foundation of Shandong province that the dilemma of organizational design and innovation management research on the basis of SPCL theory of the software enterprise. The paper is just the research results of the project. So the R&D team is especially the software R&D team and the R&D staff is software developers.The knowledge that R&D fellows own is the most important competitive advantage, so R&D fellows are reluctant to share with others, which will directly influence the team performance, especially the innovation performance. Through the literature research, we find that task interdependence will enhance the demand for cooperation and easily induce the dependency between individuals, which will accumulate the individual efforts into the team strength and achieve the team goals. Therefore how to enhance the intention and behavior of knowledge sharing by work design to improve team innovation performance has become the spot research for scholars and enterprises at home and abroad.In addition, research shows that shared mental model can enhance the privities between members, which will accelerate the pace of innovation. But under the circle phenomenon, the differential mode of association makes the privities more complicated.Therefore this paper selects the R&D team as the research object, and explores the connection between task interdependence and the R&D team innovation performance as well as the impact of shared mental model and atmosphere of the "Error Routine" of the team. On this basis, this paper constructs the theory model in which task interdependence is regarded as the independent variable, shared mental model is regarded as the intermediary variable, atmosphere of the "Error Routine" of the team is regarded as the moderator variable and team innovation performance is regarded as the dependent variable. And this paper puts forward 10 theoretical hypotheses.This paper theoretically analyses the model this paper constructs based on the related theories and literature review firstly. Then, an empirical study with 27 R&D team from Beijing, Jinan, Yantai (including 208 team members) is made to conform the theory design by the statistical analysis methods of descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, hierarchical regression analysis, bootstrapping and so on. The main conclusions are as follows:Firstly, from the view of job characteristics, task interdependence has a significant positive effect on R&D team innovation performance and shared mental model as well as the two factors dimension-structure (assignment-based shared mental models and cooperation-based shared mental models).Secondly, from the view of team cognitive status, shared mental model as well as the two factors dimension-structure has a significant positive effect on R&D team innovation performance. And team shared mental model plays an intermediary role between task interdependence and R&D team innovation performance.Finally, from the view of team situation, atmosphere of the "Error Routine" of the team has a negative moderated role on the relationship between task interdependence and team shared mental model. And the stronger the atmosphere is, the weaker that the intermediary role of the shared mental model play between task interdependence and R&D team innovation performance.