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| Multiple Motivational Paths of Core Participants' Knowledge Sharing Behaviors in Open Innovation Platforms |
| Shen Zhanbo,Li Ang |
| (School of Management,Hebei University,Baoding 071002,China) |
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Abstract The personalized, dynamic and differentiated user needs are increasingly significant, and thus it is difficult for enterprises to meet the diversified needs of customers by their own resources. In innovation practice, many enterprises seek to fully take advantage of user knowledge behaviours to enhance innovation efficiency by building open innovation platforms. The results of many studies on platform users' knowledge-sharing behaviour either do not classify users or focus mainly on the category of leading users as a group, which inevitably leads to contradictory research conclusions.#br#On the basis of social cognitive theory, this paper constructs a model of core participants' knowledge-sharing behaviours with multi-factor concurrency at individual and environmental levels. This study uses social capital theory centrality and structural hole thinking to locate and collect 245 core participants' questionnaires in 25 sections on Pollen Club, Xiaomi MIUI, and Haier HOPE open innovation platforms through the social network analysis method. Meanwhile, with the help of fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), the study obtains four grouping paths that generate high knowledge sharing behaviours and two grouping paths that lead to insufficient knowledge sharing behaviors. This proves that core participants' knowledge-sharing behaviours are complex, with multiple antecedents and concurrent influences with the characteristics of different grouping paths.#br#There are three essential findings in this study: firstly,innovation self-efficacy is a necessary condition for core participants to engage in knowledge sharing behaviour; secondly,outcome expectation is a core condition for core participants not to engage in knowledge sharing behaviour; thirdly, the factors contributing to high and low knowledge sharing behaviour of core participants are asymmetrical.#br#Given the critical influence of innovation self-efficacy and outcome expectation on core participants' knowledge-sharing behaviours and the findings of multivariate configuration, three suggestions are proposed accordingly. First, it is essential to improve core participants' innovation self-efficacy. Therefore platform managers should build a knowledge storage and retrieval mechanism, so that core participants can strengthen their confidence in knowledge sharing with the support of rich "knowledge tools"; then an efficient link mechanism between core participants and leading users and ordinary users is expected so that core participants can expand their knowledge and internalize their capabilities in the knowledge link of "knowledge center - knowledge bridge - knowledge public"; an example mechanism for core participants is also necessary so that more core participants will be involved and devoted; a feedback mechanism for knowledge sharing results is indispensable so that core participants can get positive feedback on knowledge sharing behaviors in a timely manner, and enhance their recognition of their own capabilities in knowledge sharing. Second, it is suggested to strengthen incentives for core participants. Platform managers should first strengthen material incentives,relationship incentives and spiritual incentives, such as granting honorary titles according to the level of knowledge sharing contribution of core participants. The third suggestion is to establish multivariate configuration and dynamic thinking. According to the characteristics of individual factors and environmental factors in the platform and their evolution trends, platform managers should choose one or several reasonable configuration paths among multiple configurations through configuration thinking, develop specific and feasible programs, and promote the production of knowledge sharing behavior of core participants. In view of the characteristics of multiple linkage, combination and concurrence, and achieving the same goal by different routes, platform managers can choose the most feasible action plan based on their own resource type, number and other constraints, and on the premise of achieving the expected goal of knowledge sharing behavior of core participants, and constantly adjust and optimize the action plan according to the new stage of platform development and new combination of situations.#br#This paper contributes to the existing research results in two aspects. First,it fully considers the complexity and diversity of the platform user groups. It uses the thinking and methods of social network analysis, such as a structural hole and centrality, to locate the core participants, a necessary but not yet widely noticed user group. This study compensates for traditional studies' generality and singularity of user object selection.Second, this study fully considers the interaction effects between the individual and environmental levels and investigates the impact of multi-factor synergy on the knowledge sharing behaviour of core platform participants. It breaks through the limitations of traditional single-factor-based platform users' knowledge sharing research, further enriches the evolutionary perspective, research methods and contents of knowledge sharing behaviour in open innovation platforms and provides some inspiration and references for subsequent studies.#br#
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Received: 24 April 2022
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