The Important of Organization Integration and Communication to Increase R&D Engineers' Creativity

The Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) firms are very much depended on R&D engineers, who are viewed as the source of creativity and innovation for the firms to improve its business values and to sustain the firm's position in this ever changing and highly competitive market. However, Malaysia's GERD/GDP ratio of 1.07 in 2011 was considered low compared to other Asia Pacific countries like Singapore, China, Korea and Japan. Besides, the Global Innovation Index published by Cornell University, INSEAD, WIPO (2014) also indicated that Malaysia's score values of 45.60 (100 is the best) was lower compared to China (46.57), Singapore (59.24), Korea (55.27), and Japan (52.41). Nonetheless, this indicates that Malaysia still has room to catch up its R&D and innovation performance with these countries. In order to promote R&D engineers' creativity within the organization, organization integration and information and communication are viewed to be well shaped to enhance creativity of the engineers. The researchers also proposed that knowledge exchange will play an intervening role to link the relationship between organization integration and creativity, as well as the relationship between information and communication and creativity. Hence, the purpose of this research is to examine the influence of organization integration and information and communication on R&D engineer's creativity. At the same time, the researchers also examine the mediating effect of knowledge exchange on the above-mentioned relationships. Survey data was rendered from a sample of 140 R&D engineers working in the ODM companies in Malaysia. The researchers employed Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using SMART-PLS version 2.0 package to analyse the model. The results indicated that only organizational integration has significant positive influence on both knowledge exchange as well as R&D engineer's creativity. The knowledge exchange has also shown the mediation effect on the direct relationship between organizational integration and creativity. The results offer several suggestions to ODM firms in Malaysia. In particular, organization can manage organization integration effectively and encourage the knowledge exchange among R&D engineers in order to increase the R&D engineer's creativity. The paper concludes with the limitations and implications, as well as suggestions for future research.