Abstract
Team psychological safety — a non-threatening and safe climate — allows team members to express and share each other's opinions freely, and this sharing may produce more useful perspectives to induce team creativity. In a psychologically safe climate, transactive memory systems (TMSs) may be constructed for describing the specialised division of cognitive labour for solving information problems and thereby enabling team members to quickly gain and use knowledge across domains. As a consequence, further ideas may be generated within teams, increasing team creativity. Our research model is assessed using data from a sample of 110 team members from 40 research and development (R&D) teams in a leading technology company in Taiwan and analysed using the partial least squares method. The results of this study reveal that: (1) team psychological safety did not directly affect team creativity, (2) team psychological safety affects TMSs, (3) TMSs affect team creativity, and (4) TMSs fully mediate the relationship between team psychological safety and team creativity. This study also discusses the implications for team creativity.
Highlights
Creativity and innovation represent crucial means by which organisations can respond to change and proactively shape their business environments (Kaplan, BrooksShesler, King, & Zaccaro, 2009)
This study examined the effect of team psychological safety on team creativity
Our study extends the application of team psychological safety and contributes to theoretical and practical applications of psychological safety in team settings
Summary
Creativity and innovation represent crucial means by which organisations can respond to change and proactively shape their business environments (Kaplan, BrooksShesler, King, & Zaccaro, 2009). R&D is knowledge intensive and requires team members to contribute their individual knowledge and expertise In this regard, developing TMSs (Wegner, 1987) to effectively manage team members’ knowledge may be helpful for enhancing team creativity. Psychological safety supports a sense of openness to broad ideas, and thereby new suggestions and divergent perspectives are permitted and encouraged in this climate (Bradley, Postlethwaite, Klotz, Hamdani, & Brown, 2012) From this perspective, R&D team members who perceive psychological safety are likely to freely exchange and communicate with each other regarding their knowledge and perspectives. Psychological safety-induced interactions and knowledge exchange may enable team members to develop a collective awareness of who knows what, as in Wegner’s (1987) TMSs. the relationship between team psychological safety and TMSs may be expected to be positive. This exploration may help to expand the theories of team psychological safety and TMSs on creativity research
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