Focusing The Mediating Role Of Knowledge Management Practices: How Does Institutional And Interpersonal Trust Support Exploitative And Exploratory Innovation?

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of both institutional and interpersonal trust on innovation and deepens the analysis by exploring the mediating role of knowledge management (KM) practices in this relationship. Conceptually, this reflection leads to the proposal of a conceptual model summarizing the relationships between the research variables. This model was tested with 226 senior officials in companies operating in the information and communication technologies (ICT) Tunisian sector on the basis of a structured questionnaire. The collected data were treated by structural equation analysis using AMOS software. The results of the empirical study highlighted the significant relationship between interpersonal trust and innovation and confirmed that KM practices act as partial mediators in this relationship. Findings show also that institutional trust is not correlated to KM practices and to innovation.