Enhance Team Creativity Research Articles

I Am Match with Teams: How Person-Team Fit Facilitates Team Creativity?

As diversity becomes more widespread within teams, it is crucial to examine the dynamics of person-team fit and its effect on team creativity. By exploring the interplay between complementary fit and supplementary fit, this study aims to shed light on how these two dimensions of person-team fit contribute to the creative processes within teams based on the optimal distinctiveness theory (ODT). A two-wave field survey was conducted among 363 frontline employees within 113 teams in hotels. The regression results indicated a positive association between complementary fit and team creativity. Furthermore, the mediating role of information elaboration in this relationship was observed. Supplementary fit played a positive moderating effect between complementary fit and team creativity whereby teams with higher levels of complementary fit demonstrated higher levels of team creativity, particularly when supplementary fit was also high. Our findings thus provide significant implications for organizations seeking to enhance team creativity, that is, ensuring an inclusive climate that promotes the emergence of shared perceptions regarding both complementary and supplementary fit.

Agile work practices and team creativity: the mediating role of team efficacy

PurposeThis study aims to examine the impact of two dimensions of agile work practices (i.e. agile taskwork and agile teamwork) on team efficacy and creativity. Further, it examines the mediating effect of team efficacy in the relationship between two dimensions of agile work practices and team creativity.Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected from 563 professionals working in 290 information technology (IT) companies in India using a self-reporting structured questionnaire. Partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to test the hypothesized model.FindingsThe results demonstrate that agile taskwork and agile teamwork positively impact team creativity and team efficacy, and team efficacy positively impacts team creativity. Furthermore, team efficacy partially mediates the impact of agile taskwork and agile teamwork on team creativity.Practical implicationsThis study shows the importance of agile work practices and team efficacy to enhance team creativity. The research offers managers strategies to boost team creativity.Originality/valueThere is a dearth of research examining the distinct effects of agile taskwork and agile teamwork on team efficacy and team creativity. Also, this study is one of its kind that examines the mediating mechanisms that explain the effect of agile taskwork and agile teamwork on team creativity.

Charismatic speech features in robot instructions enhance team creativity

This study examines whether a social robot can enable team creativity and increase team performance depending on its speaking style. The aim is to provide insight into human teams' creativity and performance when exposed to different ways of speaking by a social robot, that is, when the robotic creativity facilitator is using different acoustic-prosodic features. In one condition, participants received their instructions from the robot in a “charismatic” speaking style, in the other, the robot used a less engaging way of speaking. The results show that when the robot's speech is based on charismatic speech characteristics, it is significantly better at enhancing team creativity and performance than when its speech uses fewer charismatic speech characteristics. The robot's speaking style thus influences its effectiveness as team creativity facilitator.

How Does Feedback Valence Improve Team Creativity by Influencing Team Relationship Conflict?

IntroductionTeam creativity is increasingly important to organizations, and the enhancement of creativity has become a key management challenge. Feedback is a very important management tool in the creativity enhancement process. Its use to enhance team creativity raises an important question, namely if positive or negative feedback valence affects team creativity. This is particularly important because researchers still only have a limited understanding of this impact.MethodsThis study adopts an experimental research method to explore the influence mechanism of feedback valence on team creativity. One hundred seven teams and 379 college students participated in experiments that lasted for a total of 1600 minutes.ResultsIt is found that feedback valence positively affects team creativity and confirmed that positive feedback (relative to negative feedback) is more conducive to team creativity. Team relationship conflict is also found to mediate the relationship between feedback valence and team creativity. Positive feedback helps to reduce team relationship conflict, which (indirectly) positively affects team creativity; negative feedback increases team relationship conflict, which (indirectly) negatively affects team creativity. Meanwhile, creative time pressure moderates the relationship between: 1) feedback valence and team creativity; and 2) feedback valence and team relationship conflict.DiscussionThe research results do not just enrich theoretical research (into feedback valence, team relationship conflict, creative time pressure and team creativity), as they also provide valuable inspiration to managers seeking to improve team creativity in management practice.

Team knowledge management: how leaders’ expertise recognition influences expertise utilization

PurposeThis paper aims to extend the literature on how to harness the expertise of team members. This paper suggests that the leader’s expertise recognition plays an important role in enhancing team effectiveness. In addition, leader’s personal dispositions shape how the leader’s recognition could benefit team expertise utilization.Design/methodology/approachThis paper utilizes a two-wave, multi-source (team leaders and team members rated) survey design from 78 information technology teams to test the proposed moderated mediation model.FindingsThe data analysis revealed that a leader’s expertise recognition is positively related to team expertise utilization. Moreover, the leaders’ traits (i.e. social dominance and reflectiveness) act as important boundary conditions of this relationship. Specifically, only when the leader is less socially dominant or more reflective can they fully utilize the expertise recognition and enhance team creativity through team expertise utilization.Originality/valueThis study investigated an important issue that expertise utilization research has hitherto overlooked: the effects of leader’s expertise recognition on team expertise utilization and team creativity.

Combination of Creative Thinking to Enhance Team Creativity and Team Performance: Analysis Result of the Survey to Graduate Students in the Project-Based Learning Class

Combination of Creative Thinking to Enhance Team Creativity and Team Performance: Analysis Result of the Survey to Graduate Students in the Project-Based Learning Class

Strategies to promote cross-functional team creativity in SMEs: the cooperative effect of organizational fit and cognitive interaction

Given the overwhelming increase in the background of knowledge-based economy and cross-functional team, one of the critical challenges that stimulation of the team creativity face when trying to integrate members across different functions is the need to concern individual-team suitability and overcome differentiated knowledge representation. However, availability of person-organization fit is merely applied to organization s’ development at individual level. And the issue of how to enhance team creativity in the process of interactive coordination and knowledge sharing is largely understudied. Our study attempts to investigate the TMS links between the member-team fit and cross-functional team creativity, we introduce one of the individual self-concept as moderator variable in the above relationships. We have administered a survey design with 82 teams from 35 Sic-tech enterprises and employed the cross-level mediating model for data analysis. Results show that TMS served as a positive mediator between the cross-level relationships and a feasible path of moderated mediation has been explored. These findings indicates that in the formation of a cross-functional team creativity at the cross-level are important mechanisms to understand how the remarkable effects from the individual level are transmitted to the team level.

Positive and Negative Supervisor Development Feedback, Team Harmonious Innovation Passion and Team Creativity.

In modern organizations, creative work is usually carried out by teams, and the study of team creativity will therefore have meaningful implications for organization innovation research. The improvement of team creativity is a key management challenge for organization leaders. But our knowledge of how teams respond to and benefit from the supervisor’s developmental feedback is limited. This paper draws on the interdependence and knowledge density of team creativity to study how the supervisor’s developmental feedback influences creativity at the team level. Our statistical analysis of 94 supervisors and 330 employees finds that positive and negative development feedback from the supervisor both have a positive impact on team creativity, the impact from the negative development feedback is even stronger, and we also finds that the team’s harmonious innovation passion mediates the relationship between the supervisor’s developmental feedback and team creativity. In addition, we conclude that proactive personality activity moderates the relationship between the supervisor’s positive (negative) developmental feedback and the team’s harmonious innovation passion. Our research promotes the development of the study of team creativity in the Chinese cultural context and it is also an important application of developmental feedback that can be incorporated into management practices to enhance team creativity.

Role Modeling Effects: The Influence Mechanism of Team Leader’s Job Involvement on Team Creativity

Researchers have examined the effects of multiple leadership styles on team creativity but have yet to examine how team leader’s work attitudes would influence team creativity. Drawing on social learning theory, we explored how team leader’s job involvement would enhance team creativity through improving team members’ average job involvement. Using a sample of 101 knowledge-based teams from a Chinese state-owned media technology company, we found that team leader’s job involvement could promote team members’ average job involvement, and then enhance team creativity. In addition, team leader’s prosocial motivation and mean leader-member exchange (LMX) could strengthen the positive relationship between team leader’s job involvement and team members’ average job involvement, and also strengthen the indirect positive relationship between team leader’s job involvement and team creativity via team members’ average job involvement. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

The Double-edged Sword Effect of Leader Critical Thinking on Team Creativity

Drawing on the component model of creativity, we test the processes through which leader critical thinking might influence team creativity and the boundary conditions. We argue that two team processes necessary for team creativity, including team willingness to take risks and team information elaboration, link leader critical thinking and team creativity. Specifically, these two processes act in a paradoxical way such that leader critical thinking may reduce team creativity via decreasing team willingness to take risks, while enhance team creativity via promoting team information elaboration. In addition, we propose that these effects are contingent on leader’s use of two types of power – reward power and coercive power. In particular, leader’s use of reward power may mitigate the negative effect of leader critical thinking on team willingness to take risks, and its positive effect on team information elaboration; while leader’s use of coercive power may strengthen the negative effect of leader critical thinking on team willingness to take risks, as well as its positive effect on team information elaboration. After developing and validating the measurement of critical thinking (Study 1), we tested the hypotheses using a two-wave design with field data from a large technology company (Study 2). Our results supported all the hypotheses except for the moderating effect of leader’s use of reward power in the relationship between leader critical thinking and team information elaboration. The findings offer interesting theoretical and practical implications for critical thinking and team creativity.

Does Contingent Reward Leadership Enhance or Diminish Team Creativity?

Although prior research has shown that contingent reward transactional leadership is, on average, nearly as highly related to team outcomes as is transformational leadership, few studies have examined the mechanisms whereby and the conditions under which contingent reward leadership is related to team creativity. Drawing on social exchange theory, we argue that contingent reward leadership can enhance team knowledge sharing and, in turn, team creative performance because it specifies effort-reward contingencies for knowledge sharing and because it motivates team members to reciprocate for consistence and transparent treatment their leader exhibits towards them. Moreover, we propose that this relationship is moderated by leader unpredictability, which can undermine the otherwise positive effects of contingent reward leadership. In a two-source, lagged design (three-wave) field study with data from 70 organizational teams, we found a conditional indirect (moderated mediation) effect of contingent reward leadership on team creative performance through team knowledge sharing. This conditional indirect effect was positive when leader unpredictability was low, and negative when leader unpredictability was high. Our research suggests that consistent and predictable contingent reward leadership can be an effective tool for leaders to foster creativity in teams.

Shared Leadership and Team Creativity: Construction Industry Perspective

The construction industry is a multiteam continuum, where in addition to the civil engineers, a wide array of experts and tradesmen provide necessary inputs to complete projects on time and schedule. Such essential inputs are provided by the skilled teams working in parallel and along with the civil engineers, but through separate leaders who are usually led by a project manager who is often a civil engineer or an architect. However, it is a growing concern that if such teams are given more autonomy in the form of shared leadership, it can lead to extended team creativity in a construction project. This study attempts to evaluate such an argument. This study also considers a mediating role of “professional identity salience” that highlights the fact that team members realize their specific professional roles in particular teams and then strive for better knowledge and performance. A moderating role of team coordination is then introduced in this study to assess professional identity salience effect to enhance team creativity. The authors collected a time-lagged data set from 84 working teams in construction projects. The analysis showed that professional identity salience positively mediates the link between shared leadership and team creativity. Furthermore, this relationship is also found to be moderated by the level of team coordination. Based on the results, this study explains how, when, and why shared leadership improves creativity in construction project teams. This study aims to help project managers to understand the shared leadership concept and its implementation in construction projects to enhance team creativity.

Shared leadership and team creativity

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to extend the theoretical understanding and conceptualization of shared leadership by examining the impact of cognitive trust as an antecedent of shared leadership. Further, the study examines the mediating effect of team learning on relationship between shared leadership and team creativity.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopted a mixed method approach with sequential explanatory research strategy. Using a survey questionnaire, data from 44 teams were collected at two different time points. Semistructured interviews were carried out with 22 teams to explain the results that emerged from the quantitative study.FindingsThe study found that cognitive trust positively influences shared leadership. Further, team learning fully mediates the relationship between shared leadership and team creativity. The major themes that emerged from the qualitative study are participant's experiences of shared leadership in team, reasons to exert leadership, reasons to accept leadership and consequences of shared leadership.Practical implicationsOrganizations can enhance team creativity by promoting shared leadership in the organization.Originality/valueThis study examines the mediating process of team learning between shared leadership and team creativity. Mixed method approach adopted in the study explains the shared leadership process by building on both quantitative and qualitative research.

Thanks for your ideas: Gratitude and team creativity

Many ideas and products are borne out of collaborative efforts among members of teams and workgroups, and thus finding ways to improve team creativity is of significant interest. Adopting a collective information processing perspective, we argue that gratitude intervention for teams would serve as a powerful facilitator for information elaboration—whereby team members engage in more deliberate and thorough integration of others’ ideas—and, in turn, enhance team creativity. Study 1 found that teams in the gratitude condition increased information elaboration more than those in the neutral condition. Study 2 compared teams in gratitude emotion and teams in positive emotion in general. Teams in the gratitude condition generated highly creative ideas, due to more information elaboration. On the other hand, teams in the positive emotion condition expressed greater enthusiasm and confidence in their ideas and immediately accepted the ideas suggested, which led to an increase in the quantity of ideas. Our findings suggest that gratitude facilitates intellectual exchange in groups, which in turn enhances team creativity. We discuss our findings’ implications for team creativity and potential directions for future research.

From Empowerment to Multilevel Creativity: The Role of Employee Self-Perceived Status and Feedback-Seeking Climate

Employees’ perception of their intrateam status plays an important role in the leader–member interaction process. Combining relational fairness theory and status theory, the present study reveals how leadership empowerment behavior (LEB) affects employee and team creativity. Specifically, we propose that LEB may increase employee creativity by elevating employee self-perceived status and enhance team creativity through fostering a feedback-seeking climate in the team. Moreover, we propose that, at the team level, team status conflict moderates the relationship between LEB and feedback-seeking climate such that LEB is only positively related to feedback-seeking climate when status conflict is low but not when it is high. We further propose that team feedback-seeking climate also mediates the interactive effect of LEB and status conflict on team creativity. Results based on data collected from a sample of 84 teams with 392 employees supported our hypotheses. We also discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings and propose future research directions.

The Riddle of Heterarchy: Power Transitions in Cross-Functional Teams

In this paper, we develop the concept of a power heterarchy, which is a conceptualization of power structures in groups that is more dynamic and fluid than traditional hierarchical structures. Through a study of 516 directional dyads in 45 teams, we demonstrate that heterarchical structures in which the expression of power actively shifts among team members to align team member capabilities with dynamic situational demands can enhance team creativity. Our results indicate that this positive effect of power heterarchies on team creativity is contingent on the team perceiving the shifts in interpersonal power expressions as legitimate. We discuss the implications of this heterarchical power structure for research on group functioning, power, and legitimacy in organizations.

How Transformational Leaders influence Team Creativity: An Empirical Test of Mediating Mechanisms

Using a sample of 62 ongoing research and development (R&D) project teams from a large multinational company, the present study examines how transformational leaders enhance team creativity. The re...

Five strategies for improving group effectiveness

The purpose of this paper is to present five strategies that can help organizations improve productivity in decision making and problem solving groups. These strategies are: Developing and building teams with the appropriate participants. Undertaking techniques that will improve and enhance team creativity. Coaching the team members and training them to improve their behaviour, communication and thinking skills. Planning the team event and supporting the meeting by using effective facilitation techniques and interventions. Utilizing the appropriate technology in order to improve communication, idea generation and group memory. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Team leader style: enhancing the creativity of employees in teams

Shows that the communication style that team and project leaders use to enhance team creativity is of paramount importance in trying to promote creativity in the workplace. Team leaders need to be trained to exhibit a communication pattern that enhances team creativity, but they should be trained in such a way that team members perceive accurately the message the team leader is portraying. Explains how team leaders can be trained to exhibit a consultative/team‐oriented communication style to enhance team creativity, as opposed to a directive/assertive style, such that team members perceive the team leader’s message accurately. Describes a follow‐up evaluation process, including sample questions for a survey of team members’ perceptions of leader style.