The Impact of Top Managers’ Knowledge Value on Knowledge Sharing Practices on Open Innovation and Organizational Performance

Innovation is considered as a vital factor for companies in order to create value and maintain a competitive advantage in today's highly complex and dynamic environment. Innovations is strongly dependent on  knowledge, expertise, and commitment of employees and the value of senior management knowledge as key inputs in the value creation process. Knowledge is recognized as an important source of competitive advantage and value creation to improve performance, as an essential element for sustainable development. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the value of top management knowledge and knowledge sharing methods on innovation and organizational performance. This research is applicable purposively and descriptively in nature. The statistical population of the existing research is the managers of technology or knowledge-based companies located in the growth center of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. From this statistical population, 110 samples have been considered by available sampling method. The data collection tool was Singh et al.'s (2019) questionnaire. It has been used to measure face validity from the point of view of experts and convergent and divergent validity and factor loadings. Cronbach's alpha and composite reliability were used to measure reliability. The total Cronbach's alpha value was estimated to be 0.916, which is in the acceptable range. Data analysis was performed using structural equation modeling method and Smart PLS 3 software. The results showed that the value of top management knowledge had a positive and significant effect on knowledge sharing methods with a path coefficient of 0.623, and a T-statistic of 10.04. Knowledge sharing methods had a positive and significant effect on open innovation of input and output with path coefficients of 0.461, 0.538 and T-statistics 4.806, 7.27, respectively. Input-open innovation had a positive and significant effect on the performance of the organization with a path coefficient of 0.381, and T-statistic of 3.706, but open-innovation innovation did not have a significant effect on the performance of the organization with a path-factor of 0.186, and T-statistic of 1.342. The value of top managers’ knowledge with the mediating role of knowledge sharing methods with path coefficients of 0.287, 0.335 and T-statistic of 4.003, 5.029 has a significant effect on open input and output innovation. Knowledge sharing methods with the role of mediator of open input innovation had a significant effect on the performance of the organization with a path coefficient of 0.176, and T-statistic of 2.707, but methods of knowledge sharing with the mediator role of open innovation output on the performance of the organization with a path coefficient of 0.1, and T-statistic of 2227/1 had no significant effect. Therefore, it is concluded that the value of knowledge of top managers affects the ways of knowledge sharing and open innovation and organizational performance in knowledge-based companies.