On the relationship between scientific cooperative networks' characteristicsand teams' knowledge creation

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Science Research Management ›› 2011, Vol. 32 ›› Issue (7) : 104-112.

Zhang Pengcheng, Peng Han

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Abstract

Knowledge is recognized as the most important resource in the 21st century, and it has become a vital issue to understand the creation of new knowledge. Therefore, the relationships between scientific cooperation networks and knowledge creation performance are analyzed in the perspective of social networks' structural characteristics. To testify the hypotheses, 24 scientific research teams in the management field are selected, and their data of 1,494 papers published in the six-year period are collected. Then, a cooperative network model is built based on their co-authorships among 888 authors. The results indicated that cooperative networks' structural characteristics made different effects on team knowledge creation performances: (1)the number of cliques had apositive impact on knowledge creation performance; (2)the proportion of maximal sub-graphs and networks density had negative correlations with knowledge creation performance;(3) networks centrality has no relation with knowledge creation performance. Finally, the suggestions to promote knowledge creation performance of scientific cooperation teams from aspect of teams' structure are provided.

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knowledge creation / cooperative networks / structural characteristics / scientific research team

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Zhang Pengcheng, Peng Han. On the relationship between scientific cooperative networks' characteristicsand teams' knowledge creation[J]. Science Research Management. 2011, 32(7): 104-112

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