Organizational culture and knowledge creation capability

Purpose Organizational culture comprises a firm's climate that informally and tacitly defines how the firm develops and uses knowledge, thus it has a significant effect on knowledge creation capability. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of organizational culture on knowledge creation capability. Design/methodology/approach The data of 212 Chinese firms collected through face‐to‐face interview is used to empirically test the hypotheses. Findings This study finds that organizational culture plays a critical role in knowledge creation capability. Specially, collectivism has a positive impact on knowledge creation capability, while power distance and uncertainty avoidance have negative effects. Originality/value This study not only contributes to knowledge management research by identifying a key antecedent of knowledge creation capability – organizational culture – but also is of importance to organizational culture literature by demonstrating the proper organizational culture for knowledge creation capability.