How knowledge collecting fosters organizational creativity

Based on the interactionist perspective proposed by Woodman et al. (1993), this paper conceives organizational creativity as a complex concept whose investigation requires the understanding of the process, the product, the person, and the situation. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to enrich the understanding of how organizational creativity can be fostered by offering a framework which combines (inter-)individual-level learning (collecting knowledge from others), information sharing (through information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructures), and contextual factors (perceived top management support). The empirical analysis draws on a sample of 362 employees from five subsidiaries of multinational corporations. The analysis is based on multivariate regression models considering organizational creativity as dependent variable. The paper shows that individuals’ orientation toward learning from others significantly enhances organizational creativity. However, heavy ICT use negatively moderates the relationship between knowledge collecting and organizational creativity, while top management support does not show a significant moderating effect on the association between knowledge collecting and organizational creativity. Based on these results, the paper contributes to the literature on organizational creativity by confirming the importance of providing a holistic view of the phenomenon, consistent with its inherent complexity. In so doing, it suggests organizations and their managers should simultaneously pay attention to individual and contextual factors when planning how to foster their firms’ creativity, as both of them are found to play a critical role in firms’ success and competitiveness.