Abstract
Given that work teams have been widely used in a variety of organizations to complete critical tasks and that the use of social media in work teams has been growing, investigating whether and how team social media usage (TSMU) affects team creativity is imperative. However, little research has empirically explored how TSMU affects team creativity. This study divides TSMU into two categories, namely, work-related TSMU and relationship-related TSMU. Basing on communication visibility theory and social exchange theory, this study constructs a moderating mediation model to understand how TSMU affects team creativity. In this model, team knowledge sharing is used as mediating role and team-member exchange (TMX) is used as moderating role. Two-wave research data collected from 641 employees in 102 work teams in Chinese organizations are used for regression analysis. Results show that (1) Work-related TSMU and relationship-related TSMU are positively affect team creativity. (2) Team knowledge sharing plays a partly mediating effect on the relationship between work-related TSMU and team creativity and that between relationship-related TSMU and team creativity. (3) TMX not only positively moderates the indirect effect of work-related TSMU and relationship-related TSMU on team creativity through team knowledge sharing. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.
Highlights
Creativity—the joint novelty and usefulness of ideas regarding products, services, and processes (Zhou and Hoever, 2014; Amabile and Pratt, 2016)—is critical for organizations to survive and attain a competitive advantage in today’s rapidly changing environment (Shin et al, 2012)
The results of empirical study support the proposed research model, and the main findings are as follows: First, we found that both work-related team social media usage (TSMU) and relationship-related TSMU are positively related to team creativity
Work-related TSMU could increase message transparency which facilitates team members to generate ideas, coordinate with each other, and complete tasks, whereas relationship-related TSMU could enhance network translucence which allows team members to build and maintain network relationships, so as to enhance team cohesion that positively related to team creativity (Joo et al, 2012)
Summary
Creativity—the joint novelty and usefulness of ideas regarding products, services, and processes (Zhou and Hoever, 2014; Amabile and Pratt, 2016)—is critical for organizations to survive and attain a competitive advantage in today’s rapidly changing environment (Shin et al, 2012). Given that work teams have been widely used in enterprises to complete critical tasks, and basing on previous literature on enterprise social media usage (Kwon and Wen, 2010; Liu et al, 2014, 2020; Sun and Shang, 2014; Van Zoonen et al, 2017; Ma et al, 2020), this study defines TSMU as the extent to which team members usage of TSMU either for tasks or for relationships. In the situation of relationship-related TSMU, team members with high-quality TMX are more willing to actively pay attention to colleagues through social media, be aware of their interests and hobbies, and share knowledge with them more actively. Team members with low-quality TMX, even if relationship-related TSMU provides a convenient platform for communication between them and their colleagues, they are pay less attention to the personal information released by their colleagues on social media, may weaken the positive effect of relationship-related TSMU on knowledge sharing.
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