The effects of knowledge management and self-organization on organizational creativity: The mediating roles of corporate innovativeness and organizational communication

Abstract

Creativity and innovation are very important to achieve successful performance results in the organizations. Even there is a common view about the effects of the environment to increase creativity; there are limited studies about the institutions how to use corporate tools for this purpose. This study aims to determine the factors behind organizational creativity and evaluate the effects of these factors on organizational creativity within a model demonstrating structural relations. The rapid development of information and communication technologies have been changing the organizational structure, business and work methods, manager and employee profile, and in general work life, and have been bringing out new models particularly in communication in inside and outside the organization. Institutions aim to strengthen their employees with a positive approach by infusing them with concepts such as creativity, and flexibility and supporting them. In this study we examine the effects of these organizational predictors like knowledge management and self-organization on the employee creativity through innovativeness and communication. In our survey we used questionnaire method to the convenient sampled 227 employees in Turkey. Factor analysis towards findings and progressive intermediary variable tests are carried out by verifying different models. It was found that knowledge management and self-organization are effective on organizational creativity, but the most important factor determining organizational creativity is organizational communication followed by corporate innovativeness. We suggest the managers, in order to increase organizational creativity in their institutions; they should use knowledge management and corporate innovativeness effectively, so they can increase the efficiency of organizational communication.