The effects of interaction between team climates and KMS value perception on knowledge activities: a multilevel socio-technical systems approach

As individuals are the actual agents of knowledge management (KM) activities, they are influenced by the technical and social aspects of an organization. The effects of social and technical aspects on KM, however, have either been studied separately, or one aspect has been emphasized over the other. This study used the multilevel approach to investigate the interaction between technical and social systems within the work system of KM by examining how the social system moderates the effects of the technical system on KM activities. The social system is operationalized as a team climate, which is the socially shared perception among members within a team, whereas the technical system is operationalized as the perceived value of the KM systems (KMS), which is the technical information system that deals with organizational knowledge and is realized in the work setting in the form of the perception of individuals. We conducted a field study that involved 80 teams of 419 individuals from three knowledge-intensive companies. A hierarchical linear model was employed to analyze the multilevel structure: individual-level KMS perceptions for operational support and strategic decision support, and KM activities with the team-level affective and innovative climates. Our findings show that the innovative team climate magnifies the effect of the perceived KMS value of individuals for strategic decision support on their knowledge adoption; whereas, the affective climate strengthens the effect of the perceived KMS value of individuals for operational support on their knowledge transformation.