1.Introuction
Driven by the most powerful double-engine of mass entrepreneurship and innovation, enterprises, especially high-tech manufacturing enterprises’ innovation activities are more and more active. With the communication and collision of ideas among knowledge workers, the enterprises’ knowledge traverses the process of socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization. This process is called knowledge spiral. Under the process of knowledge spiral, the enterprises’ knowledge constantly realize the innovation and breakthrough of knowledge ontology in order to deprive new knowledge that drives the technological process. Obviously, knowledge spiral is a natural barrier to promote enterprises’ knowledge progress and healthy growth. An efficient knowledge spiral inevitably improves the efficiency of enterprises’ knowledge and technology innovation. The core power of knowledge spiral stems from the knowledge interaction among knowledge workers. Knowledge spiral also depend on the consistency of organizational structure dimensions, relationship dimensions, and cognitive dimensions with various knowledge activities. This creates an appropriate internal and external environment, and fully mobilizes the subjective initiative of knowledge creation. This process is key to ensure the successful operation of knowledge spiral mechanism. The empirical results show that simmelian ties, high performance work practice system, and knowledge fermenting are the key conduction variables that promote the knowledge spiral, and they have excellent characteristics. Together, they discover the mechanism among simmelian ties, high performance work practice system, and knowledge fermenting while finding out the transmission mechanism of simmelian ties on high performance work practice system and knowledge fermenting as conduction. Two studies are important in solving the knowledge spiral dilemma and granting the rising trend of enterprises’ knowledge spiral.
Through looking at all different literatures, the research on cross-boundary ties of organization and organizational knowledge performance generally go through two stages. In the first stage, related literatures focus on the relationship between the ties’ characteristics (strong or weak) and ties’ space structure with results (organizational knowledge performance including the extent of knowledge sharing and the efficiency of knowledge transferring)(Dekker, 2006). For instance, Kogut and Zander(1992) pointed that the core knowledge of organizations were comprehensively tacit and widely embedded into the practitioner communities, teams, and other social structures. Jason(2010) pointed that weak ties which only served as mediators were useful for the exploration and derivation of knowledge, and strong ties which served as connectors were useful for the discovery and application of knowledge. The literature in the second stage focuses on the characteristics (simmelian ties or not) of ties that have effects on results(Zhangwei, 2016). Sorenson (2006) and other scholars pointed that non-simmelian ties were likely to directly absorb and integrate knowledge and information with middle or low heterogeneity. Simmelian ties are more likely to directly improve the overall knowledge innovation performances of enterprises by the desire of sharing knowledge and similar knowledge base among knowledge workers.
Following the research logic, this study not only integrates the features and characters of simmelian ties into the same research framework, but also tries to clarify the specific mechanism of the cause and reason of knowledge performance. It takes high performance work practice system and knowledge fermenting as the breakthrough points, and constructs theoretical framework of transmission mechanism of simmelian ties on knowledge spiral. The theoretical framework sets high performance work practice system and knowledge fermenting as conduction and dual media channel variables, which takes high-tech manufacturing enterprises as empirical analysis objects. The study carries out empirical research on the transmission mechanism and media paths of simmelian ties on knowledge spiral by combinations of differential evolution algorithm method, extended DEMATEL method, and Bayesian estimation-SEM method, which provides theoretical references and practical guidances for promoting and catalyzing the knowledge fermenting and knowledge spiral situation of high-tech manufacturing enterprises.