The effect of trust asymmetry and network embedding on team innovation mechanism

QU Gang; LU Xin; WANG Qi

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Science Research Management ›› 2022, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (4) : 177-184.

The effect of trust asymmetry and network embedding on team innovation mechanism

Qu Gang, Lu Xin, Wang Qi

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Abstract

Innovation is an important driving force for enterprises to maintain a competitive advantage and promote sustained economic growth. The high failure rate of tasks generally faced by innovation teams makes it a key reason for restricting the innovation and development of enterprises. Existing studies have found that teamwork formed by team members based on their knowledge of each other is an important prerequisite for reducing innovation failure rates. Transactive memory system is a cognitive division mechanism that fully utilizes and coordinates knowledge in different fields within the team to achieve efficient division of labor and collaboration, and has an important impact on the innovation performance of the team.
By combing the relevant literature, this study found that there are still the following theoretical issues to be explored about the impact of the interactive memory system on the performance of innovative teams: First of all, the existing literature on the antecedents of the formation of transactive memory system is limited to team characteristics, team communication, etc., ignoring the influence of general phenomenon of trust asymmetry on the interactive memory system. Secondly, most of the existing studies have explored the formation mechanism and value boundary of transactive memory system based on the characteristics and types of tasks, but little attention has been paid to the important situational factor of team social network structure.
This paper focuses on the interference of trust asymmetry on the active cooperative behavior of team members may be an important factor in the formation of transactive memory system. Therefore, this paper constructs a theoretical model of "trust asymmetry-transactive memory system-innovation team performance" to investigate the antecedents and value effects of transactive memory system, and to reveal the boundary conditions of the value creation of transactive memory system from the perspective of network embedding.
In this paper, a mobile application software project design team composed of students from a university is selected to carry out experimental research, and empirical analysis methods are used to test the reliability and validity of the data and verify the hypothesis. The research found that: firstly, transactive memory system has a significant positive impact on the performance of innovative teams, and its mechanism of action can be summarized as three paths: promotion of team creativity, increasing task efficiency and improvement of member satisfaction. Secondly, trust asymmetry is not conducive to the formation and development of transactive memory systems. Asymmetric trust will trigger the knowledge hiding behavior of team members, which is not conducive to the identification, retrieval and coordination of each other′s knowledge, and hinders the effective operation of transactive memory system. Furthermore, social networks among members have significant boundary effects. The centralization of network can significantly weaken the inhibitory effect of trust asymmetry on the transactive memory system, but at the same time reduce the positive contribution of transactive memory system to team performance.
The research conclusions not only expand the related research on the performance-driven mechanism of innovative teams from the perspective of trust asymmetry, but also reveal the boundary conditions of transactive memory system driving innovative team performance from the perspective of network embedding, which has important practical significance for improving team and enterprise innovation performance: First, enterprises should pay full attention to the positive effect of team transactive memory system on team division and collaboration and its outstanding contribution to team performance. Second, enterprises should continuously strengthen the trust environment of the innovation team and optimize the knowledge coordination effect of transactive memory system. Third, enterprises should dynamically adjust the network embedding characteristics of members according to the evolution law of team goals, so as to maximize the value contribution of transactive memory system.

Key words

trust asymmetry / transactive memory system / network embedding / innovation team

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Qu Gang, Lu Xin, Wang Qi. The effect of trust asymmetry and network embedding on team innovation mechanism[J]. Science Research Management. 2022, 43(4): 177-184

References

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