| Author: | Ko, Ka Bo Krista |
| Title: | Problematizing collaboration contexts in innovation management : an empirical study in textile technology development |
| Advisors: | To, Chester, K. M. (ITC) Zhang, Zhiming (ITC) |
| Degree: | Ph.D. |
| Year: | 2015 |
| Subject: | Textile industry -- Management Textile industry -- Technological innovations Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations |
| Department: | Institute of Textiles and Clothing |
| Pages: | xix, 359 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 30 cm |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | In this thesis, the author attends to the innovation project and collaboration issues among the textile and apparel industries. Innovation is one of the most vexing challenges, but it is vital to the survival and prosperity of modern corporations. Managing innovation involves cross-functional project teams that are geographically dispersed and have to align contingently with one another in highly autonomous structures. An effective collaboration is therefore critical to the support of their interdependent tasks and the accomplishment of definite goals. Yet, the relevant literature devotes scant attention to the relationship between team collaboration effectiveness within innovation contexts, while there are manifest indications of such concerns in today’s business environment. This research study in general aims to explore the contextual antecedents of collaboration in the context of innovation team, and to evaluate how collaboration effectiveness influences innovation project outcomes. In particular, the author endeavors to develop a conceptual model for analyzing and elucidating cross-functional collaboration within the context of innovation project. At the beginning, the author reviews extant literature and state-of-the art collaboration systems, and elucidate dynamic contextual factors among innovation team members. It is concluded that team consensus, organizational contexts and innovation complexities are the contextual antecedents of collaboration among innovation project teams. Thus, the author correlates the interrelationship among these factors, and proposes a conceptual collaboration model for innovation project teams. The author adopts both qualitative and quantitative methods to examine the proposed conceptual model in three distinct phrases. Firstly, the author conducts in-depth interviews with team members who work on textiles innovation projects. These industry practitioners’ views on collaboration issues are collected and analyzed for conceptualizing the collaboration context. The three contextual antecedents are comprehended significantly in the course of collaboration, and the project performance and effectiveness are much subject to the influence of collaboration antecedents. Secondly, the author observes ethnographically the collaboration issues amongst a group of virtual project teams in a textiles innovation project. The results affirm the proposed conceptual model, and provide insights on the moderating effects of the relationship between innovation projects and the course of collaboration. The findings are followed by an industry survey and further analyzed using inference techniques. The author collects 267 sets of useful data from the practitioners of textile innovation projects. Multivariate analytic techniques in confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) are applied to the model and test the empirical results. The results affirm the contextual antecedents in innovation management and their structure associated with collaboration effectiveness amongst innovation project teams. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b2798171x.pdf | For All Users | 3.5 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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