We examined servant leadership as a precursor to a knowledge-sharing climate and demonstrated the mediating role of knowledge-sharing climate in the relationship between servant leadership and team performance. Data from 67 teams, comprising 1,884 direct sales representatives of a large cosmetics company in South Korea, were analyzed at the team level. Actual team sales data were obtained from the company 3 months after surveying, and regression analyses and bootstrapping were used to test the hypotheses. The results showed 2 key findings: servant leadership positively affected the knowledge-sharing climate of the team; and knowledge-sharing climate mediated the relationship between servant leadership and team sales performance. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

PurposeA worker with a proactive personality actively pursues changes in the environment instead of maintaining the status quo, leading to an expected result of a negative relationship between proactive personality and psychological withdrawal behaviors. The authors propose that based on the trait activation theory (TAT), this negative relationship is moderated by servant leadership.Design/methodology/approachEmpirical data collected from subway station workers in three metropolitan cities in South Korea supported all the hypothesized relationships. Even though the workers are not public servants, the subway companies are owned by three metropolitan cities. With reliability and validity tests for the measurements, the authors performed an ordinary least square (OLS) hierarchical multiple regression analysis for hypotheses testing.FindingsA multilevel analysis showed that the higher a worker's proactive personality is, the less likely it is that he/she shows withdrawal behaviors at work and that the negative relationship between the two is stronger under servant leadership. An organization pursuing maximization of its members' proactive personality may find an advantage in servant leadership.Research limitations/implicationsFirst, the data was collected from three metropolitan city-owned companies, which may have different work attitudes and behaviors. Second, the authors hypothesized and found a negative relationship between the predictor and the dependent variable. To apply TAT more appropriately, the dependent variable could have been a positive work behavior showing a positive relationship between the predictor and the dependent variable.Originality/valueThe results of this study have both theoretical and empirical implications. In terms of theoretical implication, the study rather indirectly supports TAT. While Greenbaum et al. (2017) demonstrated the triggering effect of abusive supervision on employees' Machiavellianism, which leads to unethical behaviors, this study showed a stronger negative relationship between proactive personality and psychological withdrawal behaviors. This study provided empirical evidence showing servant leadership's role in lowering negative behaviors. This study's findings suggest how an organization could maximize the benefits of members' proactive personality under high servant leadership.

PurposeThis study aims to explore how and what type of team diversity is related to team creativity in R&D organizations, incorporating conflict as a mediator and transformational leadership as a moderator.Design/methodology/approachSurvey questionnaires were used to collect data from 24 Korean R&D teams (185 team members, 24 team leaders and 24 managers) in the public and private sectors. The dependent variable, team creativity, was measured by questioning R&D team managers to whom R&D team leaders report directly, and the antecedents, mediator and moderator were answered by team members and their leaders.FindingsThe data confirmed that team diversity, particularly informational diversity, was positively associated with team creativity. However, conflict did not show a significant mediating effect between team diversity and creativity. Transformational leadership had a negative moderating effect between informational diversity and task conflict in such a way that when transformational leadership was high, teams with higher informational diversity showed lower task conflict between team members.Originality/valueA growing number of R&D projects require interdisciplinary efforts resulting in incorporating scientists and engineers from multiple disciplines, and growing numbers of women and minorities now choose careers in science and technology. Naturally, R&D project teams have become more diverse than before. This study provides empirical evidence from multiple sources, showing both mediating and moderating effects on the relationship between R&D team diversity and creativity.

Today convergence technologies have become a major issue in science policy. This paper describes the current state of scientific collaboration in convergence technologies among researchers in South Korea, by conducting survey and the Social Network Analysis (SNA) with a data set of 1,095 researchers who have involved in the development of the convergence technologies. The main research findings are fivefold. First, dominant numbers of researchers are involved in convergence technology with IT because IT is recognized as the most competitive technology in Korea. Second, mobility of researchers is active in convergence technologies. Third, it is found that the researchers in convergence technologies are more productive in terms of the number of research papers per capita than those in other scientific fields. Fourth, they, however, show limited research collaboration, compared with their high productivity. Finally, the members of the network in convergence technologies are closer to each other than those in other scientific fields, but most of their collaborative relationships remain bilateral rather than triangular. Only a few researchers act as hubs, revealing that collaborative research relationship in convergence technologies in Korea is highly concentrated. At the last part, some policy recommendations to promote research collaboration in convergence technologies are discussed.

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