The Impact of Organizational Structure and Social Structure on Organizational Knowledge Creation: A Conceptual Framework

In the era of New Economy, knowledge creation has been regarded as the main source of organization’s competitive advantage. Based on the assumption that knowledge is originally generated and constructed from organizational members, this paper aims to explore how knowledge is constructed and created in organizations with the existence of organizational structure and social structure. On the “hard” side, organizational structure stands for the strategy for innovation adopted by the organizations. On the “soft” side, social structure depicts mostly the interaction between organizational members. We expect that organizational structure would affect organizational capabilities of exploitation or exploration and, in turn, different organizational structure would have influence on how knowledge is socially constructed. Since under today’s dynamic environment, organizations are more interested in becoming ambidextrous at the same time in the same unit, this paper tries to explore the paths from organizational structure and social structure to exploitative or exploratory innovation. We propose that both the “hard” and “soft” side of the organization should not be overlooked if we are to shed more light on the theory of organizational knowledge creation.