The effect of researchers' interdisciplinary characteristics on team innovation performance: evidence from university R&D teams in China

Abstract

This study examines the effect of researchers' characteristics on the performance of R&D teams. Based on the multi-perspective of organization behavior and knowledge management, the authors adopt the framework of ‘Input-Process-Output’ regarding the process of the R&D team as knowledge creation. The theoretical model and corresponding hypotheses were tested empirically, drawing on a sample of 80 R&D teams from four universities in China. We concluded that knowledge communication, sharing, and integration play very important mediated roles in the knowledge creation process of the R&D team. Though researchers might have differing opinions on interdisciplinary research, they still tend toward communication and sharing their knowledge, experience, and viewpoints in the R&D process; this is an essential means for the achievement of knowledge integration. In order to achieve high innovation performance, management should pay attention to the process of knowledge communication, sharing, and integration.

Keywords:

• innovation performance
• interdisciplinary
• knowledge management
• R&D team

Acknowledgements

We thank Professor Yehuda Baruch, Professor Guangming Hou, and peer reviewers for their many helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. This work is sponsored by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 71002090.