Science Research Management ›› 2022, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (11): 124-133.

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Impact of internal and external integrated development on individual innovation performance——The role of knowledge manipulation and proof goal orientation

Zhao Fuqiang, Zhou Qian, Chen Yun   

  1. School of Management, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan 430070, Hubei, China
  • Received:2020-03-24 Revised:2020-08-10 Online:2022-11-20 Published:2022-11-18

Abstract:    With the development of global integration, mobile Internet and artificial intelligence, the external environment of organization is becoming increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA). Therefore, innovation is regarded as the core of enterprise competition and sustainable development. However, individual innovation is the basis of organizational innovation, the new ideas generated by it have become the key to the survival and prosperity of organizations. Therefore, it has become an urgent problem for the organization to help employees improve their innovation performance. It is well known that knowledge is the basic raw material of innovation. Therefore, individual innovation performance largely depends on the knowledge exchange. The current research results show that knowledge exchange is the most significant antecedent variable of innovation whether at the individual level, team level or organizational level. Through unrestricted knowledge exchange, employees can effectively collect and utilize the diverse heterogeneous knowledge distributed in individuals and work units, thus promoting the generation of creative solutions.
    As we all know, training and development is the key to the promotion of individual innovation ability and the stimulation of innovation motivation. In order to improve individual innovation performance and promote organizational development, in the past, organizational managers focused on the development of internal knowledge resources, but lacked the acquisition of external multiple heterogeneous knowledge. As a result, the improvement of individual innovation ability and performance is limited, so it is a realistic choice for enterprises through the internal and external integrated development to enhance employees′ innovation ability, motivation and performance, help employees and organizations to develop win-win cooperation. Through internal and external integrated development, the organization can obtain external knowledge resources, utilize internal knowledge resources and integrate internal and external knowledge resources, so as to make employees generate their own resource increment, increase the probability of employees entering the value-added spiral, and reduce the possibility of falling into the spiral of loss. All these can promote the positive performance of employees, alleviate the negative results such as job burnout or pressure caused by resource loss, and make them more energy to engage in innovation, so as to increase their innovation performance. However, the mechanisms between internal and external integrated development and individual innovation performance are remain to be answered.
    Although the benefits of external acquisition, internal utilization and internal and external integration of knowledge are well known, they all need to be realized through knowledge exchange. Once individual knowledge is shared and becomes a public product, others can freely obtain and use it, which leads to the imbalance of motivation between self-interest and collective interest, and then they will refuse to share their knowledge. In the face of knowledge sharing dilemma, employees may adopt knowledge sharing, hiding or manipulation in order to alleviate the knowledge sharing dilemma. Knowledge sharing shows how employees are consistent with team and organizational goals in terms of function. Knowledge hiding shows how employees manage knowledge according to their own interests and political needs. Knowledge manipulation enhances knowledge value by exaggerating the expected return of knowledge to weaken or ignore the potential defects of knowledge. 
   The current relevant literatures have found that there are many studies on knowledge sharing, there is also a great amount of research on knowledge hiding, but little on knowledge manipulation. According to the current research, knowledge manipulation is an individual subjective behavior choice under the action of cognition, which is influenced by the individual environment and their own characteristics. According to the theory of social information processing, the occurrence of individual behavior and attitude is the result of the comprehensive action of environment and individual. Individuals collect the relevant information of the events in their environment, use their own experience to analyze and judge the information comprehensively, and adjust their own behavior and decision-making accordingly. In the organizational context, human resource practice is an important information source and influencing factor for employees to process and form cognition in the process of expressing their attitudes and needs. In view of this, from the perspective of information processing, this paper explores the mechanism of internal and external integrated development on individual innovation performance through knowledge manipulation.
    According to the current research, as a predisposing factor of individual workplace behavior, goal orientation has been proved to be an important predictor of interpersonal behavior. In order to further open the black box mechanism of internal and external integrated development through knowledge manipulation, this paper chooses proof goal orientation as its boundary condition, examines the situational condition effect of it on the impact of internal and external integrated development on individual innovation performance mediated by knowledge manipulation, and expands the relationship between existing goal orientation and knowledge exchange as well as its relationship with individual innovation performance. The impact of individual knowledge exchange behavior choice on individual innovation performance has always been controversial. Therefore, this paper attempts to explore the black box mechanism of internal and external integrated development affecting individual innovation performance through knowledge manipulation, and investigate the scenario boundary conditions of its action mechanism.
    Based on the perspective of social information processing and the theory of resource preservation, this paper explored the mediating role of knowledge manipulation in the impact of internal and external integration development on individual innovation performance, and investigated the role of proof goal oriented boundary conditions in its mechanism through constructing a moderated mediation model and being combined with 391 employees′ questionnaire survey, multi time point tracking and hierarchical regression analysis. The empirical research finds the follow. Firstly, internal and external integration development has a significant positive impact on individual innovation performance. Secondly, knowledge manipulation has a significant intermediary role in the impact of internal and external integration development on individual innovation performance. Finally, proof goal orientation moderates the direct impact of internal and external integration development on knowledge manipulation and its indirect effect on individual innovation performance through knowledge manipulation.

Key words: internal and external integrated development, knowledge manipulation, individual innovation performance, proof goal orientation