Knowledge Capital Accumulations and Employee Involvement Work Systems—Does Workplace Culture Have a Role?

Abstract

Knowledge capital accumulations are impacted by a variety of workplace factors, including the human resource management work system and the workgroup culture in which it is embedded. Organizations adopting high-involvement work systems stressing employee participation, empowerment, commitment, and accountability have the potential to produce, and to be a beneficiary of, greater stores of employee intellectual capital. The role of workplace culture in this relationship is potentially salient but its operational characteristics require further elucidation. Using a competing values framework to characterize workplace culture, four culture archetypes can be specified: hierarchical, market, entrepreneurial, and clan. Results from step-wise regression analysis show that the four workplace culture archetypes contribute differentially to intellectual capital stores, yet only the clan and entrepreneurial culture archetypes partially mediates this relationship.