Abstract
This paper explores individual’s role in the innovation process of firms by determining staff members’ openness to engage in cooperative behaviors with their peers in the Chinese context, and subsequently, the impact of those interactions on the perceptions of trust among colleagues, and how those links influence the innovation capability of firms. Also, we size the extent to which employees’ years of experience can moderate those relations. Questionnaire responses derived from employees in Chinese technology-driven firms were used to perform the statistical analysis and test the hypotheses drawn in this study. The individual’s engagement in cooperative behaviors was proven to be rather unbiased among colleagues. Likewise, those dynamics led to positive perceptions of trust among them and added to the innovation capability of firms while an individual’s years of experience didn’t influence those dynamics. The present article examined two knowledge-sharing approaches used to ease cooperative behaviors among staff members. However, it is also necessary to examine the influence of other approaches in order to generate more precise comparisons of the frameworks that can yield better results. It is suggested that Chinese firms adopt a more reflexive learning approach that would facilitate individual’s engagement in cooperative behavior that lead to innovation. These results can be useful for managers in industries such as software-engineering and product-design which depend heavily on the effective transmission of knowledge among staff.