Knowledge sharing, cui prodest? Organizational creativity

Based on the interactionist perspective proposed by Woodman, Sawyer, and Griffin (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, this work attempts to understandi how organizational creativity can be fostered by combining (inter-)individual-level learning (collecting knowledge from others), information sharing (through 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 and shows that while individuals’ orientation toward learning from others significantly enhances organizational creativity, heavy ICT use negatively moderates the relationship between knowledge collecting and organizational creativity. Differently, top management support does not show a significant moderating effect on the association between knowledge collecting and organizational creativity. Based on this, 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. It thus 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.