Amin Hashemi; A Jassbi; A Bonyadi Naeini; M. R. Daliri
Abstract
1- INTRODUCTION
The study of business transformation trends in current organizations, especially in knowledge-based ones, indicates new trends in the business environment in which innovation is considered the main factor of advancement, power, and competitiveness. Meanwhile, the human capital ...
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1- INTRODUCTION
The study of business transformation trends in current organizations, especially in knowledge-based ones, indicates new trends in the business environment in which innovation is considered the main factor of advancement, power, and competitiveness. Meanwhile, the human capital of organizations, which is one of their intangible values, plays a key role in realizing and promoting innovation. With regards to employees of organizations as the initiators of the innovation process, the implementation of innovative policies in organizations seems to depend largely on their employees’ characteristics. Meanwhile, cognitive styles are proven to be the cause of differentiation in individuals. Since innovation is the result of having problem-solving insights in individuals, taking individual perspectives among the various factors affecting organizational innovation, this study is aimed to recognize and investigate the relationship between the employees’ decision-making style and their innovative work behavior.
2- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Innovative work behavior is the intentional behavior of employees to create, introduce, and implement new ideas to reach shared organizational benefits. This behavior is a multidimensional construct at the individual level consisting of exploring, producing, supporting, and implementing an idea by employees. Among potential affecting factors, cognitive decision-making styles are of most important ones that affect employees’ innovative behaviors. Few studies in this field examined individual factors like employees' characteristics as a basis for innovative work behavior. Cognitive styles are made up of employees' physical and psychological characteristics that determine their individual and organizational behaviors. Studies indicate that styles for performing complex tasks such as problem-solving, decision-making, learning, and causal explanations of life events are compatible with changing work routines. Kirton's adaptive-innovative style is comprised of three dimensions of originality, efficiency, and rule governance, based on which employees analyze and solve the problems considering the two ends of adaptation and innovation. Originality shows employees' creativity in problem-solving; efficiency refers to accuracy, reliability, and discipline; rule governance deals with respect for regulations and legal authorities.
3- METHODOLOGY
Employing a quantitative research method and a researcher-made conceptual model, the relationships between innovative work behavior and its components (exploration, generation, advocation, and implementation of ideas) with cognitive decision-making style and its components (originality, efficiency, and rule governance) were examined. Also, the moderating effects of age, gender, and organizational position were analyzed. The needed data was gathered by distributing questionnaires among 950 employees working in 12 different departments of a knowledge-based IT firm. Linear regression analysis was conducted in SPSS v.27 and Minitab v.20 software to test the research hypotheses.
4- RESULTS & DISCUSSION
All the components of the decision-making style did not affect the innovative work behavior. In fact, decision-making style was only a good predictor for two components of innovative work behavior, including exploration and generation of ideas. Research results also indicated that the variables of age, gender, and organizational position moderate the relationship between decision-making style and innovative work behavior. In addition, pieces of evidence were found for the association of originality with idea generation and efficiency with idea implementation. It was also determined that, among various components of decision-making style, rule governance has a strong relationship with the advocation and implementation of ideas.
5- CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS
The relationship between decision-making style and innovative work behavior has been rarely studied. This study would thereby enrich the literature by extending the current knowledge because suggested that having decision-making insights play a significant role in the emergence of innovative behavior. Given the strong relationship between rule governance and advocating and implementing ideas, it is concluded that both the organizational and individual factors have an important role in accomplishing innovativeness in organizations. Therefore, future researchers are recommended to consider individual and organizational factors simultaneously to better percept organizational innovation.
Sirous Amirghodsi; Ali Bonyadi Naieni
Abstract
Extended abstract
1- INTRODUCTION
Todays, fast-changing environment, companies are required to acquire and update knowledge in order to gain competitive advantage. Knowledge enables organizations to anticipate the nature and commercial potential of changes. the ability to acquire, organize and disseminate ...
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Extended abstract
1- INTRODUCTION
Todays, fast-changing environment, companies are required to acquire and update knowledge in order to gain competitive advantage. Knowledge enables organizations to anticipate the nature and commercial potential of changes. the ability to acquire, organize and disseminate knowledge helps organizations to improve decision making, cost effectiveness, customer satisfaction and cost control. therefore, successful companies in the world have focused on organizational knowledge management as a necessary requirement and a priority agenda for being a great leader in competitiveness arena. knowledge management (KM) can be defined as a strategic and systematic approach to value what the organization knows. on the other hand, the most important and valuable asset of an organization is human resource, and the role of skilled and efficient human resources in achieving organizational goals is obvious and indisputable. accordingly, human resource empowerment can prepare and success organizations in the face of today’s fast-changing environment. the use of KM in organizations can affect the psychological empowerment of employees.
2- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Knowledge Management
KM is defined as a structured process including goals, identification, acquisition, development, dissemination, application, measuring and evaluation of organizational knowledge. managers try to extract accumulated knowledge in the minds of organizational members through the knowledge management, and share it among all people. in this case, the knowledge stored in the system becomes a permanent usable resource and provides a competitive advantage for the organization.
Psychological empowerment
Psychological empowerment refers to a set of mental states which is needed to perform tasks and control actions, and under these conditions, the experts focus mainly is on the methods of management and control of employees at different levels. on the other hand, the psychological dimension relies on employee experiences in the workplace. according to the psychological dimension, empowerment refers to employee's individual beliefs towards organizational roles.
3- METHODOLOGY
This study is considered as a descriptive-survey research in terms of data collection. Research variables include: knowledge management components (knowledge creation, capture, refinement, dissemination, application) and psychological empowerment of employees. The population of the study includes the experts of Iranian Central Oil fields company. applying theoretical saturation method 15 experts asked to answer the questions. dematel questionnaire has been used for gathering the information.
4- RESULTS & DISCUSSION
The order of importance of knowledge management components in terms of interaction with other components is as follows: knowledge application, knowledge creation, knowledge dissemination, knowledge refinement, knowledge capture and empowerment. on the other hand, the independent components include empowerment, knowledge application and knowledge capture and knowledge dissemination. dependent components also include knowledge creation and knowledge refinement. Therefore, it should be focused on independent variables, including empowerment, knowledge application, knowledge capture and knowledge dissemination to improve the variables of knowledge creation and knowledge refinement. Among the components of KM, the component of knowledge application has a significant impact on the other three components, including, knowledge creation, knowledge refinement, and knowledge dissemination. also, knowledge creation has a significant impact on knowledge dissemination, knowledge application and knowledge refinement. the component of knowledge capture has impact on knowledge dissemination and knowledge refinement. the component of knowledge refinement is the most dependent component and in the level of 70% is affected by knowledge creation, knowledge application, knowledge capture, and knowledge dissemination. In this regard, it is clear that knowledge refinement is meaningless without knowledge creation in the organization. While comparing the cause and effect intensity of the psychological empowerment variable with KM components, because none of the affected values of empowerment from components of KM is in the upper limit domain, generally it can be suggested that empowerment is an effective variable, rather than being affected. given what was said, it can be concluded that empowerment can strengthen KM. also, it can be concluded that among the components of KM, the component of knowledge dissemination has the most constructive interaction with other components, because this component is affected by three components of knowledge creation, knowledge application and knowledge capture and it affects the component of knowledge refinement.
5- CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS
Encouraging and providing the necessary rewards to employees who contribute to the KM process should be prioritized and given special attention. By introducing top employees in the field of producing applied knowledge and appreciating them at different time intervals, human resources managers can encourage other employees to collaborate in the KM process. to improve the component of knowledge capture, the template of the managers themselves as an important part of the culturalize as well as the encouragement of successful people in the field of knowledge capture can be considered. In fact, the creation and display of a suitable behavior pattern, and the differentiation and encouragement of individuals having behavior consistent with the objectives of KM and organization, is crucial in the repetition and improvement of the components of KM, and specially knowledge capture. necessary training should be given to supervisors to enable them give adequate information to their subordinates to participate in decision making, support new and appropriate ideas and rely on the outcomes of work, as many subordinate decisions and ideas may be preferred to their opinions. Also, low-level employees should be trained to take the appropriate decisions in critical situations with full confidence in their work and by provoking a sense of ability.