A Longitudinal Study of Team Compassion, Team Integrative Complexity, and Team Innovation

Abstract

Researchers have acknowledged the involvement of a temporal dimension in determining the links between team processes and team innovation. However, the extant literature has mostly treated team processes as static factors in team innovation processes. Specifically, scant research has examined how teams use team emotion to progress a systematic information processing and why some teams are more successful in transforming the systematic information processing into team innovation over time than some others are. Drawing on research on team integrative complexity and team life cycle, we address these questions and advance our knowledge about the dynamic roles of team compassion and team integrative complexity in team innovation processes. Using data collected throughout the project life of 87 teams, we find that team compassion predicts increased team integrative complexity. Moreover, team integrative complexity throughout the project life has a marginally positive effect on leaders’ ratings of team innovation on average. Importantly, team integrative complexity occurring in the later phase of the project life is more likely to predict team innovation than that occurring in the early phase and at the midpoint. We discuss theoretical and practical implications and offer some directions for future studies.