Overcoming the challenge of exploration: How decompartmentalization of internal communication enhances the effect of exploration on employee inventive performance

Abstract

Drawing upon the notion of boundaryless organizations and upon the information processing perspective of organizational design, we investigate the decompartmentalization of internal communication as a unique organizational context that moderates the relationship between R&D employees’ exploration behaviors and their individual inventive performance. We test our hypotheses using a novel combination of survey and archival data. We find that R&D employees who explore more generate inventions that are more valuable only when in workplaces characterized by high communication decompartmentalization. Such workplaces have more frequent communication between R&D and other units, more employee mobility via cross-unit project rotations, or greater managerial support for decompartmentalization. Our findings suggest the importance of communication decompartmentalization, especially for companies that need employees to engage in exploration.