研發管理機制、實務社群學習活動、與研發績效關係之研究 – 心理安全之調節效果

Abstract

Abstract In a knowledge-based economy, managers are exhausting to activate learning activities of their employees. This study uses the theory of communities of practice (CoPs) to explore employees’ learning activities and to explore what governance mechanisms of R&D can be applied to enhance these learning activities, and to examine if these employees’ learning activities can contribute to the firm’s R&D performance. Also, we will apply Edmondson’s (1999) psychological safety as an integrated factor of the social-psychological parts of R&D environments to see if psychological safety has any impacts on the dynamics of employees’ learning behaviors. This study will focus on the relationship between “governance mechanisms of R&D” and “learning activities of the CoPs”, and then the effects of “learning activities of the CoPs” on the “R&D performance”, along with the moderating role of “psychological safety” on the relationship between “governance mechanisms of R&D” and “learning activities of the CoPs”. A questionnaire survey was designed to test the research hypotheses. This study surveyed 280 participants from employees working in R&D project teams of firms belonging to the high-tech industries in Taiwan. We received 183 returned questionnaires. Among them, 5 were abandoned for their incomplete answers. This resulted in 178 valid questionnaires and a respondent rate of 63.8%. The results find that: 1) Among the four constructs of governance mechanisms of R&D, only “qualification of professional status” has positive impacts on all the observation, conversation, and practicing aspects of learning activities of the CoPs. And, “span of integration” has a positive impact on the observation aspect of learning activities of the CoPs. The rest two constructs (organizational structure and allocation of accountabilities) fail to exert influences on learning activities of the CoP. 2) All three aspects of learning activities of the CoPs (observation, conversation, practicing) contribute to R&D performance. This means that the members of the CoPs exhibit high level of learning activities can enhance the R&D performance. 3) But regarding the moderating role of psychological safety on the relationship between governance mechanisms of R&D and learning activities of the CoPs, the results only support one of the twelve sub-hypotheses of H3 (H3-1-4: psychological safety has an enhancing effect on the positive impact of “qualification of professional status” on the “observation” aspect of learning activities of the CoPs). Instead, the results reveal that psychological safety does have significant direct effects on the learning activities of the CoPs. In other words, it is more suitable to treat psychological safety as an antecedent of the learning activities of CoPs instead of as a moderating factor.