Network structure, organizational learning culture, and employee creativity in system integration companies: The mediating effects of exploitation and exploration

• We introduce individual social network at the group level into a creativity model.
• We show how firm can improve individual creativity depending on the working style.
• We show that exploitation and exploration positively affect individual creativity.
• We show that formation of learning culture positively affects the working style.
• We show that degree centrality influence exploration, but structural holes do not.

To maximize employee performance in today’s increasingly competitive environment, companies must enhance individual creativity through the effective management of organizational network structures and learning cultures. This study is an empirical analysis of how firms should design these structures and improve individual creativity according to employees’ working styles. We propose a research model that delineates the effect of organizational learning culture on working styles and creativity. For organizational social network structures, we measured degree centrality and structural holes. Employees’ working styles were represented as either “exploitation” or “exploration.” To validate the model, we collected questionnaires from 137 individual members of 25 recently organized teams in several large system integration companies in South Korea, analyzing the data using a structural equation model. We found that most constructs, with the exception of social network structure, positively influenced individual creativity. With respect to organizational network structure, degree of centrality had a significant effect on both exploitation and exploration.