A Case Study On Organizational Knowledge Evolution Driving By Relational Behavior

Knowledge evolution is the core process of organizational learning, and the evolution result is the source of organizational innovation. However, with the increasing market competition, companies are faced with the dilemma of organizational learning, which makes difficult to maintain their core competitiveness. So, how to learn effectively has become an urgent issue.Most existing scholars have explored the impact of external structure on organizational knowledge evolution, for example, the effect of structural characteristics of social network on organizational knowledge evolution. These studies emphasize that organizational knowledge learning is intended behavior from resource-based view, and fail to explain deep microscopic mechanism of knowledge evolution, which ignore feelings of parties in interaction context. From the perspective of guanxi, this paper explores the influence of relational behavior on organizational knowledge evolution in social interaction process. In the sense of society, relational behavior means the behavior of building emotional and social connections in order to establish, maintain and enhance guanxi. In organizational daily activities, relational behavior affects the behavior of organizational members, therefore, guanxi-based view is more line with daily practice, and this research aspect has increasingly become the focus of attention.To explore how relational behavior influences organizational knowledge evolution, this paper summarized and analyzed data for four cases using grounded theory method. First, this paper found concept connotation of relational behavior in daily social interaction by coding. Relational behavior includes renqing focus behavior and socialization behavior. Renqing is focused on emotional feelings with each other, with specific behavior of care and perspective-taking; socialization behavior emphasizes that people act in line with the identity in order to maintain guanxi, with specific behavior of value judgments and giving face.Finally, this paper found that renqing focus behavior is conductive to process of socialization behavior. Moreover, renqing focus behavior promotes the evolution of know-what to know-how; renqing focus behavior promotes the evolution of know-how to know-why. And socialization behavior promotes the spread of know-what. Finally, renqing focus behavior can help the effective use of know-what, promoting the deep evolution of knowledge. Studies show that, in daily social interaction of organization, relational behavior, including guanxi focus behavior and socialization behavior, influences microscopic mechanism of organizational knowledge evolution.