尽管以往研究认为中间人有时也会为了一个集体性质的目标填充结构洞,但是填充结构洞的后续结果却没有予以检验.本文所提出的假设认为,中间人参与结构洞填充可能会给联合团队的创造力带来正反两方面的影响.基于41家高新技术企业的专利数据,本研究利用logit模型分析了中间人参与结构洞填充过程与否对填充结果的作用规律.在以三年为数据窗口的样本中,检验结果表明中间人参与结构洞填充会降低联合团队的创造力,但并不显著;然而,在以四年和五年的数据窗口中,检验结果显著支持了这个假设,说明仅从专利中所能获得的信息看,中间人参与结构洞填充与否对联合团队创造力的影响可能具有数据窗口敏感性.这些结论深化了人们对网络动态变化与变化结果之间的理论认识,进一步拓展了中间人作用的相关研究,也为企业利用合作关系变动以提高团队创造力提供了参考.%Although previous studies have suggested that a broker sometimes close structural holes to get collective benefits,the consequence of this process have not been fully examined.It's meaningful for us to have a good understanding of such network combinations.Based on the limitations of the studies,this article studies the impact of the involvement of brokers in closing structural holes on the creativity of combined team.The study not only has theoretical significance for enriching the relative research on broker and combined team,but also has practical significance for helping managers to allocate reasonably and optimize the innovation of human resources.The findings of this study provide good reference to improve the creativity of combined teams.In the first section,this article defines the closing structural holes:Originally an open triadic relationship forms a new tie between individuals who did not have a direct tie to each other,making structural holes between them disappear.There exist two circumstances in the process of closing structural holes:involvement of brokers or exclusion of brokers.From a positive impact,the involvement of brokers in the process of closing structural holes is beneficial for internal organizations and coordination of combined teams,reducing the ambiguity of knowledge,and improving the success rate of different knowledge integration.In addition,the involvement of brokers is conducive to the usage of tertius iungens strategies to strengthen participation of other inventors,thus improving the combined team's creativity.From a negative impact and due to collaborators' lack of trust to the broker,complex knowledge that broker possesses generally will not be used in future.Instead,they are more likely to continue using knowledge that three parties are familiar with.Thus,combined teams are inclined to incremental innovation,leading to lower creativity.Therefore,based on the literature review,we propose two competing hypotheses:the involvement of brokers in closing structural holes may bring either positive or negative impact on the creativity of combined teams.In order to test the specific impact of the involvement of brokers on closing structural holes,we use the exclusion of brokers in closing structural holes as a reference variable,based on the patent data of 41 Chinese high-tech enterprises.In addition,we construct collaborative networks and observe the evolution as well as the results of the structural holes.We use the logit regression model to test our proposed hypothesis.With a three-year data window sample,the results of the analysis show that the involvement of brokers in closing structural holes will reduce the creativity of combined teams,but not significantly.However,in the four-year and five-year data window samples,the results significantly support this hypothesis.The results suggest that from the patent perspective exclusively,the effect of brokers' involvement in closing structural holes on combined teams' creativity is sensitive to the variation of data window's length.In other words,time matters if we want to test the results of closing structural holes.These conclusions not only deepen theoretical understanding of people with respect to the change between the dynamic of network and its effect,but also provide implications for enterprises to take advantage of the dynamic cooperation in order to improve team creativity.
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