Innovation, Learning and Construal Levels in the Modern Workplace

Knowledge is increasingly recognized as one of the most critical resources in the modern workplace, because the way knowledge is learned, shared and used determines organizational innovation and effectiveness. In my dissertation, I build on construal level theory to explore the relationship between workers’ roles and the types of knowledge that workers create and share. In particular, I draw upon two features of the modern workplace that are evolving dramatically – the increasing use of technology and changing hierarchical structures – to explore how the level of abstraction at which employees mentally represent their work roles mediates the relationship between these structural features of the work context and the practically-relevant and important employee behaviors underlying innovation. I leverage methodological diversity to test the hypotheses in eight studies, including two studies based on archival data, four laboratory experiments and two longitudinal studies based on survey data.