This study examines empirically the interaction effects of national culture and contextual factors (nature of the knowledge and the relationship between the knowledge sharer and recipient) on employees' tendency to share knowledge with co-workers. Quantitative and open-ended responses to two scenarios were collected from 142 managers (104 from the U.S. and 38 from the People's Republic of China). These two nations were selected due to their divergence on salient aspects of national culture, as well as their global political and economic importance. The focus on interaction effects was aimed at providing a more powerful test of culture's effects than simple comparisons of means typical of prior related research.
Consistent with culture-based expectation, the quantitative results indicated that Chinese vs. U.S. nationals' openness of knowledge sharing was related to their different degrees of collectivism—the relative emphasis on self vs. collective interests—as well as whether knowledge sharing involved a conflict between self and collective interests. Also consistent with prediction, Chinese relative to U.S. nationals shared knowledge significantly less with a potential recipient who was not a member of their “ingroup.” Content analysis of the open-ended responses further showed that the quantitative results are the aggregated outcomes of trade-offs across cultural attributes and their interactions with contextual factors.
This paper examines the association between a differentiation strategy and the emergence of innovation using a package of management control systems (MCS) tools at the operational level. We empirically test theory developed by Simons [(2005). Levers of Organizational Design. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA (2010). Accountability and control as catalysts for strategic exploration and exploitation: Field study results. Harvard Working Paper 10-051.] and Chenhall et al. [(2011). Journal of Management Accounting Research, 23: 99–128.] to examine organic innovation culture, formal controls, and an entrepreneurial gap job design (EG), as a package of MCS tools at the operational level. There is evidence that all three MCS tools are both selected or are effective in enhancing innovation. However, internally, staff activities, and line activities show significant variation in their use of MCS tools. Formal controls and EG are effective for staff activities but not for line activities. For line activities organic culture is effective but formal controls are detrimental.
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