Selecting Lead Creators’ Ideas for Team Creativity? Team Learning Goal and Advice Network Centrality

Abstract

Lead creators – the most creative members within a team has been viewed as an important source of team creative successes, particularly when possessing high levels of individual creativity. Yet existing studies showed that people are often reluctant to pursue highly creative ideas and teams may fail to benefit from lead creators’ ideas regardless of their creativity. Little is known about when and how lead creators’ ideas get adopted by teams and in turn advance team creativity. The present study integrates the motivational perspective and the social network process to propose the moderating role of team learning goals on team selection of lead creators’ ideas and the mediating role of lead creators’ advice network centrality, and further examines the performance impact of such selections. Based on a sample of 49 organizational teams, this study showed that: (1) team learning goals promote the positive relationship between individual creativity of lead creators and team selection of their ideas; (2) advice centrality of lead creators translates this joint impact of lead creators’ individual creativity and team learning goals on team idea selection; and, (3) this joint impact on team selectin of lead creators’ ideas further advances team creativity.