How getting knowledge from colleagues affects organizational creativity: The moderating influence of ICT and top management support

Despite the abundance of studies focusing on organizational creativity, only few considered it as a dependent variable. Further, while the relationship between knowledge sharing and organizational creativity seems more solid for extant literature, the role of ICT use and top management support yet calls for further investigation. Based on this, we ground on the interactionist perspective drawn by Woodman et al. (1993) and investigate organizational creativity by combining interpersonal dynamics with contextual influences. In order to capture the inherent complexity of organizational creativity, we start from the importance of individuals getting knowledge from others and then consider two contextual elements affecting organizational creativity, namely top management support and the use of Information and Communication Technology. Accordingly, our aim is to answer the following research question: “What is the relationship between knowledge collecting, ICT use and top-management support in determining organizational creativity?”. For this purpose, we analyze data of 362 employees from five Multinational Corporations’ (MNCs) subsidiaries located in Italy. We show that while knowledge collecting, ICT use, and top management support positively affect organizational creativity, a high ICT use negatively moderates the relationship between knowledge collecting and our dependent variable. Based on this, this work provides evidence on how organization-level factors (ICT, top management support) might contribute to organizational creativity, while showing that firms should carefully plan their ICT investments as they may hamper the positive linkage between knowledge flows and organizational creativity.