Evaluating team performance and the mediating role of customer knowledge development: An absorptive capacity framework

Drawing upon an absorptive capacity framework, this study explains team performance from a mediating perspective of customer knowledge development (CKD), which represents a learning process based on customer interaction. The model is tested using the data of innovation or R&D teams from large high-tech firms in Taiwan. The test results show that competence development (i.e., activities that enhance the diversified skills of team members) and pro-customer empathy (i.e., a transference of customers' problems and emotions) positively relate to team performance via the full mediation of CKD. The positive relationship between shared cognitive map and CKD is negatively moderated by collectivism.