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An empirical investigation on organizational innovation and individual creativity

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Abstract

Innovation is one of the critical success factors for organizations. It is essential for business to understand the driving forces of innovation. This study investigates the impact of the following three factors on innovation: employee relationship, knowledge sharing, and IT application maturity. 167 samples of firm level data were collected to construct the measurements of innovation, intensity of employee relationship, employee diversity, quality of knowledge sharing, and IT application maturity. It is found that all of these factors have significant impacts on innovation. We further extend the investigation to individual creativity as a corresponding concept to organizational innovation. An employee social network was constructed at a size of 149 nodes. It is shown that the centrality of each employee in the social network has significant positive impact on individual creativity. With these results from investigating organizational innovation and individual creativity, this study empirically illustrates the importance of enhancing employee relationship, knowledge sharing, and IT application maturity.

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Acknowledgments

This study is based upon work supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Number 71072086 and the Ministry of Education of China, Humanities and Social Sciences Grant: “Impacts of Social Network on Employee Knowledge Sharing and Innovation (No. 10YJA630124).”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sun Yat-sen Business School, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China

    Jianping Peng & Zhengping Fu

  2. Dillard College of Business Administration, Midwestern State University, 3410 Taft Blvd., Wichita Falls, TX, 76308, USA

    Guoying Zhang

  3. Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington, Box 353226, Seattle, WA, 98195-3226, USA

    Yong Tan

Authors
  1. Jianping Peng
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  2. Guoying Zhang
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  3. Zhengping Fu
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  4. Yong Tan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guoying Zhang.

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Peng, J., Zhang, G., Fu, Z. et al. An empirical investigation on organizational innovation and individual creativity. Inf Syst E-Bus Manage 12, 465–489 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-013-0227-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10257-013-0227-y

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