Distances in Organizations: Innovation in an R&D Lab
| Published date | 01 April 2016 |
| Author | Wilfred Dolfsma,Rene Eijk |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12114 |
| Date | 01 April 2016 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 27, 271–286 (2016)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12114
Distances in Organizations: Innovation
in an R&D Lab
Wilfred Dolfsma and Rene van der Eijk1
University of Groningen, School of Economics and Business, PO Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen, The
Netherlands, and 1RSM Erasmus University, Rotterdam,The Netherlands
Corresponding author email: w.a.dolfsma@rug.nl
The distance between actors in an organization aects how they interact with each other,
and particularly whether they will exchange(innovative) knowledge with each other. Ac-
tors in each other’s proximity have fewer conflicts, more trust towards each other, for
example, and are thus more involved in knowledge transfer. Actors close to others thus
are believed to perform better: by being more innovative, for instance. This theory of
propinquity’s claim resonateswidely in the literature and has intuitive appeal: ‘people are
most likely to be attracted towards those in closest contact with them’ (Newcomb, Th.
(1956). American Psychologist, 11, p. 575). Knowledge that a focal actor receives from
alters who are close is more readily accessed, better understood and more readily use-
able. At the same time, however, and in contrast to the what the theory of propinquity
suggests, knowledge that a focal actor receives fromalters who are at a greater distance
may be more diverse, oer unexpected and valuable insights, and therefore give rise to
innovation. In order to understand these opposing expectations, scholars have indicated
that distance must be conceived of as multifaceted: individuals can be close to each other
in one way, while at the same time distant in another. No prior paper has extensively
studied the eects of distance as a multifaceted concept, however. This study oers two
distinct contributions. It argues, first, why some instances of distance aect the oppor-
tunity to interact with alters, potentially lowering an actor’s performance, while other
instances of distance aect the expected benefits from interaction. The latter would in-
crease an actor’s performance. Secondly, this paper is the first study to test empirically
the expectations about how seven dierentmeasures of distance aect an actor’s innova-
tive performance. Innovativeperformance is measured as both creative contribution and
contribution to knowledge that has immediate commercial use (patents). In the setting
of a large research lab, it is found, contrary to expectations, that distance does not hurt
individual innovative performance and sometimes helps it in unexpected ways.
Distance between actors in an organization is be-
lieved to aect whether they will interact with each
other to exchange knowledge (Akerlof, 1997). In
the literature,interaction and knowledge exchange
are firmly expected to stimulate individual perfor-
mance and innovativeness. The theory of propin-
quity, as suggested by Newcomb (1956, p. 575),
states clearly that ‘people are most likely to be
attracted towards those in closest contact with
them’. In particular, the extent to which actors are
likely to exchange and build relations decreases as
distance between them increases (Akerlof, 1997).
If knowledge is received from ‘distant’ others, it is
not likely to be readily accessed, understood and
used (Dolfsma, Finch and McMaster, 2011). Be-
cause of distance between individuals, there may
not be interaction or exchange of knowledge, and
the knowledge thatis exchanged can be more easily
misunderstood. Since innovation comes from the
combination of dierent pieces of knowledge, in-
dividuals are thus less likely to be innovative if the
distance between them and others increases. Be-
yond the eect of distance between individuals on
their innovativeness, Monge et al. (1985) stress that
‘a variety of organizational outcomes’ are aected
by distance between individuals.
© 2015 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
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272 W. Dolfsma and R. van der Eijk
This premise is a key one,particularly in a line of
research that focuses on the functioning of global
or virtual teams – a key topic in today’s globaliz-
ing and competitive business environment (Cum-
mings, 2004; Hinds and Mortensen, 2005; Martins,
Gilson and Maynard, 2004; Maznevski and Chu-
doba, 2000; O’Leary and Cummings, 2007; Olson
and Olson, 2000). The idea in this line of research
is that ‘out of sight, means out of sync’ (Hinds and
Bailey, 2003).
Distance, however, is not a singular term, but
can have multiple dimensions, instantiations or
facets. Most ways in which distance has been
conceived and its consequences theorized, how-
ever, assume that distance hampers knowledge ex-
change and so negatively aects individual inno-
vativeness and performance. Knowledge received
from alters in one’sproximity may be too similar to
the knowledge that one already has, while knowl-
edge received from alters who are more distant is
more dierent and may lead to more actually new
knowledge arising. Some suggest that the eect of
distance on knowledge transfer and innovativeness
can be beneficial (Gilsing et al., 2008; Wuyts et al.,
2005). When and whythis would be so remains un-
clear, however.
We make two key contributions in this paper.
The first is conceptual. In addition to categoriz-
ing dierent instantiations of distance, we argue
why some instances of distance aect the oppor-
tunity to interact with alters, potentially lowering
an actor’s performance, while other instances of
distance aect the expected benefits of interaction.
The latter would increase an actor’s performance.
Increased benefits expected from an individual
exchanging knowledge with alters at a distance
would materialize as increases in individual inno-
vativeness, while increasing distance between an
individual and their alters decreases the opportu-
nities to interact and decreases innovativeness. Per-
sonal aliation distance among individuals may
be close, indicatingthat the opportunity for knowl-
edge exchange is high. Spatial distance between
individuals may be large, lowering the opportu-
nity for exchange (Alba and Kadushin, 1976). In-
dividuals exchanging overgreater distances may be
able to access knowledge unavailable in their im-
mediate environment, thus possibly providing in-
sights that help their innovative performance. This
paper, secondly, is the first study to test empiri-
cally the expectations abouthow seven dierent in-
stantiations of distance aect an actor’sinnovative
performance. We find, contrary to expectations,
that distance does not hurt individual innovative
performance,and sometimes helps it in unexpected
ways, as in the case of hierarchical distance. De-
constructing the notion of ‘distance’, and recog-
nizing that some kinds of distance mostly aect
the opportunity for exchange, while others mostly
aect the expected benefits of exchange, allows us
to show that (1) some forms of distance stimulate
innovation in an organization and other measures
do not, (2) some measures of distance contribute
to one type of proxy for innovation and not to an-
other, and thus (3) how distance is conceptualized
and measured is not a mere methodological con-
cern. We investigate these contentions for knowl-
edge transfer between laboratory scientists, using
their innovativeperformance measure comprehen-
sively as both creative contribution performance
and contribution to knowledge that has immedi-
ate commercial use (patents).
Theory: distances in organizations
Despite being little conceptualized (cf. Lechner,
1991; Wilson et al., 2008), distance between
individuals has been acknowledged to have ‘con-
siderable influence on a variety of organizational
outcomes’ (Monge et al., 1985). The impact is be-
lieved to be mostly negative: distance decreases
trust between individuals, increases the likelihood
and eects of conflicts, and will make people in
an organization interact less frequently (Hinds
and Bailey, 2003; Hinds and Kiesler, 1995; Monge
et al., 1985). The performance of individuals dis-
tanced from other individuals and of an organi-
zation where individual employees are at a dis-
tance to others suers. In more recent years the
focus for this line of research has moved to the
study of global or virtual teams, but the suggested
eects remain (Cummings, 2004; DiStefano and
Maznevski, 2000; Martins, Gilson and Maynard,
2004; O’Leary and Cummings, 2007). In these
studies, we submit, dierent instantiations or di-
mensions of ‘distance’ are conflated, giving rise
to results that are not readily interpretable from
an academic or a managerial point of view. Al-
though there is some acknowledgement that dif-
ferent dimensions to distance may need to be
recognized, each of which will aect communica-
tion in general, and knowledge transfer in partic-
ular (Boschma, 2005; Danson, 2000; Napier and
© 2015 British Academy of Management.
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