Examining the Factors Behind the Success and Sustainability of China’s Creative Research Group: An Extension of the Teamwork Quality Model

Jie Gao,Cui Huang,Qijun Xie,Jun Su

doi:10.3390/su11041195

Abstract

The Creative Research Group (CRG) is the special high-level scientific and innovation team funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China to promote basic research at the frontiers of science. In general, there are problems of “structure anomie” and “cooperation inefficiency” in the operations and teamwork dynamics within the nationwide CRG project. By extending and developing the two-stage teamwork quality model, this study aims to depict and analyze the impact factors behind the success and sustainability of the Creative Research Group (SSCRG), and reveal the relationships among them. Herein, rationality of team structure (ROTS) is used to describe the rationality of team formation and structure collocation, teamwork quality (TWQ) is used to describe the process of team members’ integration and cooperation, and SSCRG includes team performance, personal success and team comprehensive impacts. The results show that ROTS and TWQ have different influences on SSCRG, while TWQ is the key mediation factor between ROTS and SSCRG. In summary, the model built describes the complex phenomena and relationships in the teamwork of the CRG, and helps us to understand and solve the problems of structure and cooperation. Although the limitations lie in the specific samples and research methods, the extension and migration of classical models and theories would help to further deepen such research and contribute to the governance and development of such innovation teams.

Highlights

Basic research in China has made considerable progress, there is still a gap in its overall strength compared with major developed countries, according to the report of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and the “NSFC Strategic Plan for 2016–2020 (The 13th Five-Year Plan of NSFC)”
What are the specific contents that affect TWQ, and what is its specific and extended theoretical model of TWQ when predicting the success and sustainability of the Creative Research Group (SSCRG)? Based on previous studies and the current state of the CRG, we propose the theoretical model of the extended version of teamwork quality, which takes TWQ, the rationality of team structure (ROTS), and SSCRG as its main constructs and impact factors
Our results show that the standardized factor loading of variables such as TWQ, ROTS and SSCRG are at least above 0.8, which meet the criteria of structural validity

Summary

Introduction

Basic research in China has made considerable progress, there is still a gap in its overall strength compared with major developed countries, according to the report of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and the “NSFC Strategic Plan for 2016–2020 (The 13th Five-Year Plan of NSFC)”. The lack of major original achievements and the top talent team has become a key factor restricting the development of basic research and the construction of an innovative country in China. Yang Wei, the former director of the NSFC wrote in the journal Nature in 2016 that China should pay more attention to basic research and improving the quality of basic research should be the focus of China’s efforts to promote national innovation [2]. Policy and institutional arrangements are important: China is paying greater attention to the development of basic research and the cultivation of young talent as the core of its innovation-driven development strategy.

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Results

Conclusion