The Effects and Influential Factors of Employee's Knowledge Integration Capability in the Convergence Environment

Knowledge integration is becoming a primary function of improving organizational capabilities and performance in today’s convergence environment in which the integration of individual knowledge is the source of organizational knowledge creation for new product and service development. This study investigates the influential factors of employee’s knowledge integration capability and its effects. A theoretical research model was developed based on knowledge creation, socio-technical, and information processing perspectives. In particular, the model proposes a positive relationship between the knowledge integration capability of employees and their knowledge creation output. The model also includes organic organizational structure, teamwork quality, expertise, IT support, and knowledge complexity as the influential factors of an employee’s knowledge integration capability. A large-scale survey was conducted for data gathering (a total of 316 samples from 141 organizations) to test the proposed model. The analysis results of the hypotheses test show that expertise and knowledge complexity are the significant influential factors of employee’s knowledge integration capability. In turn, this capability has a positive effect on the knowledge creation output of employees. The results of this study will contribute to the development of initiatives for promoting knowledge integration in the development processes of convergence products and services.