The Effect of Team Mental Models Divergence on Creative Performance During Situational Changes

This study developed a model of team mental models’ influence on team adaptive performance at different stages. It proposed that mental models have different relationships with adaptive performance as a function of the performance stage when teams experience changes: early on (i.e., during situation assessment) more divergent mental models are needed for performance; later on (i.e., during plan execution) more convergent mental models are needed. The model was tested in an experiment with 33 teams (N= 99) faced with unforeseen change at task midway. Partially supporting the predictions of a divergence-convergence model, at situation assessment, teams that developed more dissimilar mental models attained a higher performance originality, but not higher efficiency or usefulness. However, at plan execution, team mental models’ convergence did not lead to higher performance. Implications for research on team mental models are discussed.     

Reflection Toward Creativity: Team Reflexivity as a Linking Mechanism Between Team Goal Orientation and Team Creative Performance

Purpose

This study aims at testing the mediating role of team reflexivity in the relationships between team learning, performance-prove, and performance-avoid goal orientations and team creative performance and assessing the relative importance of the three types of team goal orientation in team reflexivity and creative performance.

Methodology

We conducted Study 1 on 68 student teams by using a two-wave time-lagged design. In Study 2, we carried out a cross-sectional field study on 108 intact work teams in diverse Korean companies.

Findings

Team learning goal orientation was significantly associated with team creative performance. While team learning and performance-prove goal orientations were equally influential in predicting team reflexivity, team performance-avoid goal orientation had no relationship with team reflexivity and creative performance. Team reflexivity mediated the relationships between team learning and performance-prove goal orientations and team creative performance.

Implications

By revealing that team learning and performance-prove goal orientations can contribute to team creative performance through the facilitation of team reflective process, this study provides practitioners with insight into critical antecedents and team process that are conducive to the creative performance of work teams.

Originality/Value

This is one of the first studies to explore a mediating mechanism between team goal orientation and creative performance. This study attends to the role of team reflexivity as a key team-regulatory process that underlies the relationship between team goal orientation and team performance. Furthermore, the use of multiple studies in different contexts strengthens the robustness of the study findings.

     

成就目标导向、团队绩效控制对员工创造力的跨层次影响

成就目标导向在团队绩效控制情境下能否有效预测员工创造力是个值得关注的话题。以研发团队为研究对象, 运用线性阶层模型考察了三者间的跨层次关系。结果发现, 低绩效控制下, 精熟目标导向、表现–趋近导向对创造力有正向影响, 表现-回避导向有负向影响; 高绩效控制下, 精熟导向对创造力有“S型”非线性影响, 表现-回避导向有正向影响。结果表明, 高精熟目标导向在高绩效控制情境下抑制员工创造力, 而表现导向也并非总是与缺乏创造力联系起来, 提高表现-回避导向个体的绩效控制程度或者降低表现-趋近导向个体的绩效控制程度同样可以促进创造力。启示在于, 管理者不仅应关注成就导向的个体差异, 更应重视构建相应的绩效控制情境, 从二者交互作用出发激活员工创造力。     

团队心智模型相似性与正确性对团队创造力的影响

现代组织越来越依赖团队进行创造与创新活动, 团队创造力成为理论与实践共同关注的热点问题。最新理论指出, 与个体类似, 团队也是信息加工者, 团队决策实质上也是信息搜寻、编码、存储和提取的认知加工过程。从团队认知角度开展研究是团队创造力领域的新方向。鉴于此, 本研究从团队认知的角度出发, 探讨共享心智模型与团队创造力之间的关系。基于80个信息平台运行维护团队的数据, 研究结果表明, 心智模型的相似性与正确性均能影响团队创造力, 但方向正好相反。心智模型相似性负向预测团队创造力, 而心智模型正确性则正向预测团队创造力。两者还共同影响团队创造力, 当成员心智模型正确性高且相似性低时, 团队创造力最高; 而当成员心智模型彼此相似但错误时, 团队创造力最差。本研究首次将团队认知和团队创造力两个研究领域结合起来, 研究结果有望丰富和拓展两个领域研究成果。     

Individual Goal Orientations,Team Empowerment,and Employee Creative Performance: A Case of Cross‐level Interactions

Intrigued by relationship between team motivational context and individual characteristics in the organizational reality, we developed and tested a cross‐level model to investigate the interactive effects of team empowerment and individual goal orientations on individual creative performance through the mediating mechanism of an individual's creative self‐efficacy. Using multi‐wave multi‐source data from 63 R&D teams in three IT companies, we found that (1) team empowerment, individual learning goal orientation, and individual performance orientation are all positively related to individual creative performance through mediation of creative self‐efficacy; (2) learning orientation and performance approach orientation could both supplement the effects of team empowerment on individual creative self‐efficacy. Our findings point to the importance of individual goal orientation in shaping the effects of team motivation climates and provide insights for both scholars and practitioners. The specific practical implications include but are not limited to (1) individuals with learning and performance approach orientations should be identified during hiring procedures given that they could still thrive in less empowered teams and maintain a relatively high level of creative self‐efficacy and creative outcomes; (2) managers should consider assigning employees who are more learning oriented to more empowering and open‐ended tasks in order to obtain better creative results.     

Information elaboration and team performance: Examining the psychological origins and environmental contingencies

Information elaboration enables functionally diverse teams to transform their breadth of knowledge resources into actionable solutions to complex problems. The current study advances information elaboration theory and research in two ways. First, we identify how team ability and social motivation composition characteristics provide the psychological origins of complex information processing efforts. Second, we identify environmental turbulence as an important boundary condition, clarifying when information elaboration benefits team performance and when it does not. These ideas were tested in a sample of 4-person self-managed teams (N = 68) which were functionally diverse and performed a cooperative strategic decision-making task. Results indicate that cognitive ability equips teams with the “can do” ability for complex elaboration efforts through emergent team mental models, whereas low preferences for self-reliance provide the “will do” motivation for in-depth information exchange through collective leadership. In turn, teams benefited from information elaboration in turbulent but not stable environments.     

Team Proactivity as a Linking Mechanism between Team Creative Efficacy,Transformational Leadership,and Risk‐Taking Norms and Team Creative Performance

Despite the growing body of research on creativity in team contexts, very few attempts have been made to explore the team‐level antecedents and the mediating processes of team creative performance on the basis of a theoretical framework. To address this gap, drawing on Paulus and Dzindolet's (2008) group creativity model, this study proposed team creative efficacy, transformational leadership, and risk‐taking norms as antecedents of team creative performance and team proactivity as an intervening mechanism between these relationships. The results of team‐level regression analyses conducted on the leaders and members of 103 Korean work teams showed that team creative efficacy and risk‐taking norms were positively associated with team creative performance. Furthermore, the relationships between team creative efficacy and team creative performance and between risk‐taking norms and team creative performance were mediated by team proactivity. These findings offer new insights regarding the antecedents and the mediator of creative performance in team contexts and important implications for theory and practice.     

CEO Ideational Facilitation Leadership and Team Creativity: The Mediating Role of Knowledge Sharing

The development of new ventures is often based on collective creative efforts. We conceptualize team creativity as a process of looking for and exploring new solutions and examine whether and how CEO leadership fosters creativity in top management teams (TMT). Data collected from senior executive teams indicate that CEO ideational facilitation leadership is positively related to team knowledge sharing, which in turn results in enhanced team exploratory behaviors. These findings bear important theoretical implications for ways in which leaders can enhance creativity in teams and augment the entrepreneurial direction of executive teams.     

Dynamic Creative Interaction Networks and Team Creativity Evolution: A Longitudinal Study

To assess the dynamical effects of creative interaction networks on team creativity evolution, this paper elaborates a theoretical framework that links the key elements of creative interaction networks, including node, edge and network structure, to creativity in teams. The process of team creativity evolution is divided into four phases, including formation, growth, maturity and decline/restart. The importance of domain‐relevant knowledge, creativity‐relevant skill, interaction frequency, interaction length, network density and closeness centrality are emphasized in specific phases of team creativity evolution in a complex creative context. To test our assumptions, a longitudinal study of creative teams in a “Challenge Cup” Creative Business Plan Competition for university students is performed and the full networks of 17 creative entrepreneur teams are mapped. Both static comparison and dynamic analysis are conducted to analyze the relationship between creative interaction networks and team creativity evolution. For specific phases of team creativity evolution, we find confirmation of our predictions. The implications of dynamic creative interaction networks for all the phases of creative teams from formation to decline/restart are discussed.     

集体心理所有权、地位晋升标准与团队创造力

基于动机性信息加工理论, 本文首次实证探讨了集体心理所有权对团队创造力的影响机制。一项来自国内企业91个工作团队数据的统计分析发现, 集体心理所有权正向影响团队创造力; 信息深加工中介集体心理所有权与团队创造力的关系; 地位晋升标准显著性调节集体心理所有权与信息深加工之间的关系, 其中刻度型晋升标准增强集体心理所有权对信息深加工的正向影响, 而竞赛型晋升标准则减弱集体心理所有权对信息深加工的正向影响。     

团队异质性的平衡性对团队创造力的影响

团队异质性的平衡性是指团队中异质性属性的相对分布情况, 是一个从不平衡到平衡的连续谱概念。作为对团队构成维度的补充, 本研究探究其如何通过团队信息深化施加影响于团队创造力。通过对浙江理工大学451名学生的团队实验研究, 得出结论认为：团队知识异质性的平衡性能够积极影响团队创造力, 且团队信息深化在这一过程中起中介作用, 性别异质性的平衡性与团队创造力之间的关系不显著。这一研究结果将有助于打开团队构成和团队创造力研究的新局面。     

Fostering team creativity: Perspective taking as key to unlocking diversity's potential

Despite the clear importance of team creativity for organizations, the conditions that foster it are not very well understood. Even though diversity, especially diversity of perspectives and knowledge, is frequently argued to stimulate higher creativity in teams, empirical findings on this relationship remain inconsistent. We have developed a theoretical model in which the effect of a team's diversity on its creativity is moderated by the degree to which team members engage in perspective taking. We propose that perspective taking helps realize the creative benefits of diversity of perspectives by fostering information elaboration. Results of a laboratory experiment support the hypothesized interaction between diversity and perspective taking on team creativity. Diverse teams performed more creatively than homogeneous teams when they engaged in perspective taking, but not when they were not instructed to take their team members' perspectives. Team information elaboration was found to mediate this moderated effect and was associated with a stronger indirect effect than mere information sharing or task conflict. Our results point to perspective taking as an important mechanism to unlock diversity's potential for team creativity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Antecedents and Consequences of Creativity in Teams: When and How Leader Humility Promotes Performance via Team Creativity

The antecedents of team creativity and their effects on team task performance are explored in this study, with a particular focus on how leader humility promotes team creativity and when team creativity can be converted into performance. Hypotheses were tested via a multiple-source and time-lagged study with 341 employees and 104 teams from five different organizations in China. The results showed that leader humility promotes team creativity through team creative efficacy, and leader conscientiousness moderates this indirect effect. Furthermore, team creativity is more positively related to team task performance when teams are more future oriented. The theoretical contributions and management significance of these findings are discussed, followed by a discussion of limitations and directions for future research.     

Members Matter in Team Training: Multilevel and Longitudinal Relationships Between Goal Orientation,Self‐Regulation,and Team Outcomes

Longitudinal data from 338 individuals across 64 teams in a simulation‐based team‐training context were used to examine the effects of dispositional goal orientation on self‐regulated learning (self‐efficacy and metacognition). Team goal orientation compositions, as reflected by average goal orientations of team members, were examined for moderating effects on these individual‐level relationships. Finally, individual‐level self‐regulation was investigated for its influence on multiple team‐level outcomes across time. Results showed generally positive effects of learning goal orientation and negative effects of avoid performance and prove performance goal orientations on rates of self‐regulation during team training. However, several of these individual‐level relationships were moderated by team goal orientation composition. The importance of self‐regulation in teams was displayed by results showing the average level of self‐regulation among a team's members over time was positively associated with team efficacy, team cooperation quality, and team decision making.     

The effects of situational goal orientation and cultural learning values on team performance and adaptation to change

In this paper, we examine the unique effects of situational goal orientation and cultural learning values on team adaptation to change and the moderating role of cultural learning values in the relationship between goal orientation and team performance and adaptation. To do this, we conducted an experiment using a 2 × 2 × 2 repeated-measures factorial design, consisting of high and low levels of learning values, situational goal orientation (i.e., learning goals and performance goals). The experimental task involved two phases: we looked at team performance in Phase 1 and team adaptation to change in Phase 2. Forty 3-person teams were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions and all teams engaged in a complex bridge-planning task. Performance was measured in terms of the quality of the planned bridge. Results showed independent effects of situational goal orientation and cultural learning values on team performance and adaptation to change. Cultural learning values also moderated the relationship between goal orientation and performance and adaptation to change. Finally, the combination of learning goals and high learning values resulted in the highest levels of initial team performance (Phase 1) and adaptation to change and improved performance (Phase 2), as compared to all other examined conditions.     

Diversity in goal orientation, team reflexivity, and team performance

Although recent research highlights the role of team member goal orientation in team functioning, research has neglected the effects of diversity in goal orientation. In a laboratory study with groups working on a problem-solving task, we show that diversity in learning and performance orientation are related to decreased group performance. Moreover, we find that the effect of diversity in learning orientation is mediated by group information elaboration and the effect of diversity in performance orientation by group efficiency. In addition, we demonstrate that team reflexivity can counteract the negative effects of diversity in goal orientation. These results suggest that models of goal orientation in groups should incorporate the effects of diversity in goal orientation.     

Linking Failure Feedback to Individual Creativity: The Moderation Role of Goal Orientation

The sense-making theory of creativity is extended by identifying failure feedback as a process that shapes creative interpretations and actions. We also consider the moderating effect of goal orientation on the relationship between failure feedback and individual creativity, according to the sense-making theory. A 2-waves survey data from 345 R&D employees and their supervisors in five Chinese high-tech companies indicated: (a) supervisors’ failure feedback positively correlates with incremental and radical creative performance, (b) learning goal orientation strengthens the relationship between failure feedback and creativity, and (c) avoidance goal orientation attenuates the relationship between failure feedback and creativity. The findings suggest that goal orientations play roles in optimizing failure feedback effects on creativity outcomes.     

A Multilevel Model of Team Cultural Diversity and Creativity: The Role of Climate for Inclusion

We developed a multi‐level model to test how team cultural diversity may relate to team‐ and individual‐level creativity, integrating team diversity research and information‐exchange perspective. We proposed that the team climate for inclusion would moderate both the relationship between cultural diversity and team information sharing and between cultural diversity and employee information elaboration. We collected time‐lagged data from 384 members and their leaders within 57 multicultural work teams. The results showed that team cultural diversity was positively related to both team creativity and individual creativity through team information sharing and employee information elaboration, respectively. We also found that the indirect positive relationship with team creativity and individual creativity was stronger for team cultural diversity when climate for inclusion of multicultural work teams was stronger.     

The Personality Composition of Teams and Creativity: The Moderating Role of Team Creative Confidence

We examined the possibility that teams composed primarily of individuals with personality characteristics conducive to team creativity (e.g., high extraversion, high openness to experience, low conscientiousness, high neuroticism, low agree‐ableness) would show synergistic increases in creativity when they experienced high levels of “team creative confidence”, a shared understanding that the team is more creative than each team member individually. We tested these hypotheses using a sample of 145 three‐student teams that worked on a set of idea generation tasks at Time 1 (T1) and a second set two weeks later at Time 2 (T2). As expected, results of cross‐lagged regression analysis indicated that when team creative confidence at T1 was high, team creativity at T2 increased quadratically as the number of team members who scored high on extraversion, high on openness, or low on conscientiousness increased. However, the number of individuals composing a team who scored high on neuroticism or low on agree‐ableness had no relation to team creativity under conditions of high or low team creative confidence. Implications of these results for the design of creative teams are discussed.     

The Creativity of Lying: Divergent Thinking and Ideational Correlates of the Resolution of Social Dilemmas

The goal of this study was to develop a measure of creativity that builds on the strengths of youth with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The assessment of creativity focused on the visual-spatial abilities of these youth using 3D modeling software. One of the objectives of the research was to develop a measure of creativity in an authentic learning environment that built on the interests and creative talents of youth with ASD. Traditional creativity tests may underestimate the creativity of youth with ASD because of the tests’ constrained nature, such as having a time limit, being limited to paper and pencil, testing in an over- or understimulating environment, and overlooking visual-spatial ability. A random selection of 27 student 3D design projects (out of approximately 100 projects) was assessed using dimensions of fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration. The validity of this assessment was examined by comparing the creativity scores of the 27 projects to the creativity scores given by a team of Google experts (3D designers and software engineers). Results indicated that the scores were significantly correlated for three of the four dimensions of the creativity assessment. There was high inter-rater reliability among coders (M = .82) using intra-class correlation (ICC). Results suggest that this assessment process could be used as a visual-spatial creativity measure for youth with ASD, as well as a creativity measure used by employers to determine real-world creative potential in their employees, particularly those with neurodiversity.