The Invisible Foundations of Collaboration in the Workplace : A Multiplex Network Approach to Advice-Seeking and Knowledge Sharing

Abstract

A revolutionary advancement of technology in the past decade brought the attention of academics and management practitioners on how to improve the innovative capabilities of organizations. Advice-seeking relationships have an essential role in the knowledge production of modern-day organizations as they enable actors to acquire information, professional support, and knowledge elements they can recombine to form new knowledge. This paper conceptualizes advice-seeking behaviour as part of an inherently complex social world that can best be captured by a multiplex approach to organizational network research. It investigates how different layers of interpersonal relationships in the workplace may contribute to the appearance of advice-seeking interactions. This study examines the cases of three knowledge-intensive organizations and applies binary logistic regression to shed light on the yet invisible relational foundations of workplace collaboration.