Effects of Network Size, Diversity, and Interaction Frequency on Individual Creativity: A Study from South Korea

Abstract

Creativity is becoming a necessary core competence in nearly all businesses today, and firms are striving to find ways to promote the creativity of employees. This study aimed to analyze the relationships between an individual actor’s network characteristics and the actor’s creativity. More specifically, this study assumed that actors qualitatively differentiate between their global and local networks depending on whether they perceive the other actors in the network as mere acquaintances or trusted persons to discuss life’s important issues with. This study used large-scale survey data collected from South Korea to empirically analyze the hypothesized relationships between network characteristics and creativity. The empirical analysis of the survey data showed that the size and diversity of the global network were positively related to creativity. However, the positive effect of global network diversity decreased with an increase in the size of the network. In the local network, frequent interactions had a positive effect on creativity, while the diversity of the local network had a moderate negative effect on creativity. Implications for the creativity literature are discussed.