Team Failure and the Creative Process: The Effect of Team Failure and Reflexivity on Creativity

Abstract

Teams in organizations often experience failures in pursuit of creative team and organizational goals. Experiencing a creative failure can disrupt important team processes that can decrease team motivation and creative performance. This reduction in performance happens through decreased team creative self-efficacy following a failure. Drawing on sensemaking theory, we propose that team reflexivity can buffer against the negative consequences of failure by enabling teams to foster productive team processes that will keep teams from experiencing a decline in creative performance. Using data from 95 teams, we found that teams high in reflexivity were able to maintain motivation after experiencing a failure.