Examining the Effect of Knowledge Creation Mode on
Knowledge Performance: Goal-free Vs. Goal-driven
Ben-Jae Su
Department of Information Management, National University of Kaohsiung 700, Kaohsiung University Rd., Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 811, R.O.C.
Chien-Hsing Wu,
Department of Information Management, National University of Kaohsiung 700, Kaohsiung University Rd., Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 811, R.O.C.
chwu@nuk.edu.tw
ABSTRACT
With the advent of knowledge economy, knowledge has become one of the most important assets for modern enterprises. Consequently, implementation of the knowledge management system is a key success to businesses. It is believed that a company who keeps up knowledge creation can continuously maintain competitive advantages. Therefore, adoption of a knowledge creation mode would highly influence the ability of knowledge creation. To be a remarkable creative organization, it has been seen that the characteristics of organizational culture could have impact on a knowledge creation mode and knowledge creation performance. However, the question of how a company considers the characteristics of organization culture in order to appropriately adopt a knowledge creation mode becomes critical to knowledge creation performance. In consequence, this research conducted an empirical investigation for the relationships among organizational culture, knowledge creation modes, and knowledge creation performance.
To derive the research findings, this study made use of questionnaire survey to collect data. There were 423 questionnaires sent to the subjects who are mainly working in the research and development department. Of which, 153 were returned, presenting a 36.17% valid returned rate. Structural equation modeling (SEM) and multiple regression analysis were employed to test the defined hypotheses. The data analysis results statistically confirmed that: (1) organizational culture shows significant impacts on both knowledge creation modes and creation performance, (2) both goal-free (thinking with full free) and goal-depended (depended on the level of creation implementation) creation modes have positive influence on creation performance, and (3) goal-driven (thinking within a defined goal) creation mode has a negative influence on creation performance. Therefore, the research finding suggests that an enterprise should be quite aware of their characteristics of organizational culture, and then adopt an appropriately knowledge creation mode to effectively improve the creation performance.
Keywords: organization culture, knowledge creation mode, knowledge creation
