Effects of task complexity on individual creativity through knowledge interaction: A comparison of temporary and permanent teams

Using the interactionist’s perspective of creativity, this paper proposes a new research model of creativity manifestation to explore how factors affecting individual creativity depend on team characteristics. We investigated the antecedents of creativity in the literature—task complexity, team member exchange, and knowledge sharing—and then examined the relationships and differences between temporary and permanent teams. To maximize practical implications, we studied two team types like project task force (PTF) and research and development (R&D) teams in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry in Korea, where strong creativity is required for team performance. PTF teams operate with a clear mission to be completed on a deadline, while R&D teams create scientific enhancements for existing products. The proposed structural model was tested empirically with cross-sectional data from 289 professionals from the two team types. Results indicated that, in the case of PTF teams, task complexity had an indirect relationship with individual complexity through knowledge interaction among team members, while for R&D teams, task complexity was directly associated with individual creativity, and indirectly associated with the creativity through team member exchange. Thus, team characteristics must be considered together with task complexity and knowledge interactions in order to achieve team goals more effectively by maximizing each member’s creativity.     

Factors Influencing Creativity in Virtual Design Teams: An Interplay between Technology,Teams and Individuals

Creativity is a topic of interest across numerous disciplines and areas of study. Creativity constitutes a challenging aspect of engineering design, and scholars in the field of management claim that the increase in virtual teamwork calls for research as to how virtual configurations alter some of the management practices based on the collocated workplace. By reviewing the different literatures, we posit a knowledge gap regarding creativity in the virtual design context, where varying degrees of virtuality are likely to exert an influence on creativity. In our quest to start bridging this gap, we pursued an exploratory case study with a student‐based virtual design team project, known as the European Global Product Realization (EGPR). Thirty‐nine interview extracts, covering most participants, along with non‐participant observation and document review, gave us insights into the nature of the project, the participants' perceptions of creativity, and their experience of designing in virtual teams. In all, our study unearths and discusses a number of factors – and the extent to which – they are found to influence creativity in virtual design teams. The study has cross‐domain relevance from those interested in the management of virtual teams through to those looking at creativity and design.     

“Where’s Farah?”: Knowledge silos and information fusion by distributed collaborating teams

The Cognitively-Based Rapid Assessment Methodology (C-RAM) system manages multiple-user interactions as users work with multiple information sources. Further, it allows users to view, exchange, organize, and combine the information available and it facilitates group decision-making. Three-member teams, randomly assigned in either the (a) view others’ whiteboards or (b) cannot view others’ whiteboards conditions, completed an intelligence analysis and mission planning task. Each team member was given access to a virtual whiteboard populated with decision cards (DCards) containing intelligence information constrained to a specific area of expertise. DCards can be assessed (rated) for decision impact and importance and team members have access to all DCards regardless of experimental condition. Team members who can view their teammates’ whiteboards during collaborative activities achieve significantly higher performance. When compared to teams unable to view others’ whiteboards, they move their own DCards less frequently, add fewer additional DCards to their own whiteboards, and rate others’ DCards less frequently. Additionally, rating one’s own DCards is the only process positively related team performance.     

Diversified Knowledge,R&D Team Centrality and Radical Creativity

The impact of team knowledge network structure on team creativity has seldom been explored. To address this gap, we argue that research and development (R&D) teams' radical creativity is not only associated with the source of diversified knowledge (insiders of the team, outsiders of the team and internet professional forums), but also with team knowledge network centrality. Data from 32 R&D teams in seven research institutions support our contention that diversified knowledge from all three sources positively affects team radical creativity. In addition, the betweenness centrality of R&D team knowledge networks moderates the relationship between two sources of diversified knowledge (insiders of the team and outsiders of the team) and team radical creativity.     

Development and Validation of Team Creativity Measures: A Complex Systems Perspective

Without formalizing the team creativity (TC) concept with reliable and valid measurement, it is difficult to conduct rigorous research to help teams generate creative ideas and problem solving at a high level, of good quality and great value. The one‐sidedness and lack of depth of existing research on team creativity leads to the limited reliability and validity of team creativity measurements. In order to solve these problems, we introduce the complex system theory and develop the TC Scale with nine items for team creativity from three dimensions: team creative thinking, team creative action and team creative outcome. The data is collected from three distinct positions of respondents (managers, team leaders and senior staff) in 183 creative teams. The results of reliability measures, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis strongly support our scale. Further, we test the correlation between team trust and team creativity to establish its predictive validity and make a further verification on the scale structure through second‐order confirmatory factor analysis. Finally, we discuss the implications for research and practice.     

Stimulating the Potential: Creative Performance and Communication in Innovation Teams

Creativity is essential to successful new product development efforts. Teams constitute the organizing principle in most modern innovation activities. Although creativity research has revealed many factors influencing individual creativity, little is known about how team‐level creativity is determined. Since the creative innovation task requires teams to combine and integrate input from multiple team members, the team's communication pattern is an important determinant of team creativity. Based on a sample of 44 NPD teams in eleven companies, this study examines the effects of team‐member communication on team creativity. It is found that both interaction frequency and subgroup‐formation of communication have a negative relationship to team creativity. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and further research is indicated.     

Team Polarity and Creative Performance in Innovation Teams

Creativity is essential for research and development efforts. Research and development endavours are typically organized in teams. Unfortunately, little is known about how the polarity or in other words the conflict potential determines the creativity of such teams. Based on a sample of 51 research and development teams (R&D teams), this study examines the effects of polarity on team creativity and attemps to explore situational conditions when conflict potential is detrimental or facilitating R&D team creativity. The results show that foremost in the conceptualization phase of R&D efforts polarity positively influences the creative performance of R&D teams, whereas at lower degrees of complexity or in situations later in the development cycle polarity negatively impacts the creative performance of R&D teams.     

Entrepreneurial Leadership and New Ventures: Creativity in Entrepreneurial Teams

This study tests the view that new venture's innovative capability is influenced by the interaction of a lead entrepreneur's leadership and his or her entrepreneurial team members' creativity, as measured by the creation of patents. Focusing on 112 entrepreneurial teams in Taiwan's high‐tech new ventures, the findings suggest that lead entrepreneurs who are risk‐taking, pro‐active and innovative can stimulate their entrepreneurial team members' creativity. Moreover, new venture's innovative capability can be improved by the joint contribution of higher entrepreneurial leadership and more creativity in entrepreneurial teams. The findings also imply that the contingent impact of creativity in teams on the leadership–innovation relationship needs to be considered.     

Understanding the Benefits and Detriments of Conflict on Team Creativity Process

Intra‐team conflict research has shown the different effects of conflict on team output, but it has not fully addressed how conflict influences the team creativity process in different task types of project teams over the project life cycle. Conflict, project life cycle, and project types are important predictors of team creativity. This paper focuses on examining the degree of conflict that the different types of project teams experienced, and more specifically this paper seeks to understand the benefits and detriments of conflict on the team creativity process. Furthermore, this paper shows that the project life cycle is a significant moderator of the conflict‐creativity relationship in different project teams.     

Triggering Creativity in Teams: An Exploratory Investigation

Triggering, developing and maintaining creativity in teams is critical to the economic performance of the firm. This article presents an exploratory action research effort in a health care organization that focused on interaction patterns amongst team members, creativity and performance. The results indicate that the teams’ inquiry and dialogue into their interaction patterns have the potential of influencing creativity. Team interaction patterns were found to influence team performance. Directions for future research are discussed.     

The gain and pain in taking the pilot seat: learning dynamics in a non immersive virtual solar system

This study describes and analyzes the learning interactions of nine high-school students’ free exploration of a virtual solar system (VSS). The VSS is a non-immersive three dimensional virtual environment based on real NASA planetary images. The computer screen serves as a “spacecraft’s window” for the learner to “fly” between objects, to change the system’s frame of reference and its pace. A systematic analysis of participants’ real-time observable interactions together with what they said revealed that each of them created an unique learning pattern within at least five different dimensions: (1) the cognitive dimension, (2) the affective dimension, (3) the navigation dimension, (4) the interface dimension, and (5) the assistance seeking dimension. The construction of meaning emerged as a non-linear process, which includes transitions between and within these dimensions. Three different styles of learning interactions were identified, suggesting that individual differences might be enhanced due to the unique VSS’ features. Overall, the VSS served as an enriching and motivational learning experience. The design of additional navigation tools and content scaffolding might help participants’ in building a sustained deep scientific understanding.     

Individual profiles and team classes of the climate for creativity: A multilevel latent profile analysis

Understanding the team climate to enhance creativity is important in academia and industry given the need for organizations to respond to the changing environment. Research on team creativity is a relatively recent trend, but most studies have been conducted from a variable‐centered perspective. Despite the contributions of this type of research, there are limitations in understanding subgroups based on individuals' perceptions. To address the limitations, the purposes of this person‐centered study are firstly to identify individual‐level latent profiles and team‐level latent classes based on the climate for creativity, and secondly to examine the differences in individual‐ and team‐level outcomes between the identified profiles and classes. This study used multilevel latent profile analysis (MLPA) with 238 individuals in 26 project teams. We identified two individual profiles, high impediments and high stimulants, and two team classes, low impediments teams and mixed impediments teams. Low impediments teams included mostly high stimulants, and mixed impediments teams included half high stimulants and half low impediments. We further determined that high stimulants and low impediments teams showed higher individual‐ and team‐level outcomes than the other profile and class. This study theoretically and practically contributes to team creativity management from a person‐centered perspective.     

Institutional boundaries and trust of virtual teams in collaborative design: An experimental study in a virtual world environment

Members of virtual teams often collaborate within and across institutional boundaries. This research investigates the effects of boundary spanning conditions on the development of team trust and team satisfaction. Two hundred and eighty-two participants carried out a collaborative design task over several weeks in a virtual world, Second Life. Multigroup structural equation modeling was used to examine our research model, which compares individual level measurement between two boundary spanning team conditions. The results indicate that trusting beliefs have a positive impact on team trust, which in turn, influences team satisfaction. Further, we found that, compared to cross-boundary teams, within-boundary teams exhibited not only higher trusting beliefs and higher satisfaction with the collaboration process but also a stronger relationship between team trust and team satisfaction. These results suggest that trust and group theories need to be interpreted in light of institutional affiliation and contextual variables. An important practical implication is that trust can be fostered in a virtual world environment and collaboration on complex tasks can be carried out effectively in virtual worlds. However, within-boundary virtual teams are preferred over cross-boundary virtual teams if satisfaction with the collaboration process is of the highest priority.     

Creativity in virtual teams: Systematic review,synthesis and research agenda

Virtual teams are gaining increasing momentum in contemporary organizations. Although it is becoming clear that virtual teams will play a major role in shaping the future of work, we still know relatively little about their creative performance. Because of the disproportionate focus on conventional, face-to-face working practices, much of the literature remains centred around co-located teams. In this review, we integrate existing research on team creativity and virtual work to identify the relevant factors, processes and contextual conditions that have been shown to influence creativity in virtual teams. We highlight the major challenges that are likely to impede team creativity and assess their relevance to contemporary virtual work practices. We conclude by presenting promising avenues for future research in this area.     

Towards understanding the relationship between team climate and software quality—a quasi-experimental study

This paper describes an empirical study that examined the work climate within software development teams. The question was whether the team climate in software developer teams has any relation to software product quality. We define team climate as the shared perceptions of the team’s work procedures and practices. The team climate factors examined were West and Anderson’s participative safety, support for innovation, team vision and task orientation. These four factors were measured before the project using the Team Selection Inventory (TSI) test to establish subject climate preferences, as well as during and after the project using the Team Climate Inventory (TCI) test, which establishes the subject’s perceptions of the climate. In this quasi-experimental study, data were collected from a sample of 35 three-member developer teams in an academic setting. These teams were formed at random and their members were blind to the quasi-experimental conditions and hypotheses. All teams used an adaptation of extreme programming (XP) to the students’ environment to develop the same software system. We found that high team vision preferences and high participative safety perceptions of the team were significantly related to better software. Additionally, the results show that there is a positive relationship between the categorization of better than preferred, as preferred and worse than preferred climate and software quality for two of the teamwork climate factors: participative safety and team vision. So it seems important to track team climate in an organization and team as one (of many) indicators of the quality of the software to be delivered.

Antecedents of Team Creativity: An Examination of Team Emotional Intelligence,Team Trust and Collaborative Culture

Teams represent a dominant approach to getting work done in a business environment. Creativity enables teams to solve problems and leverage opportunities through the integration of divergent thoughts and perspectives. Prior research indicates that a collaborative culture, which affects how team members interact and work together, is a critical antecedent of team creativity. This study explores other antecedents of team creativity, namely, team emotional intelligence and team trust, and investigates the relationships among these precursors to creative effort. Using a survey of 82 student teams at a large university in the northeast United States, our findings suggest that team emotional intelligence promotes team trust. Trust, in turn, fosters a collaborative culture which enhances the creativity of the team. Cognitive trust also moderates the relationship between collaborative culture and team creativity. Implications of these results for managers and academics are discussed.     

Building common ground in global teamwork through re-representation

We explore in this paper the relation between activities, communication channels and media, and common ground building in global teams. We define re-representation as a sequence of representations of the same concept using different communication channels and media. We identified the re-representation technique to build common ground that is used by team members during multimodal and multimedia communicative events in cross-disciplinary, geographically distributed settings. Our hypotheses are as follows: (1) Significant sources of information behind decisions and request for actions are embedded within the fabric of communicative events in which participants use both informal and formal media to express their ideas. Capturing these information sources can facilitate common ground building and accelerate the execution of action requests. (2) Re-representations of concepts, i.e., sequences of representations using diverse media and communication channels, mediate and accelerate common ground building. (3) The use of intra- or interdisciplinary re-representations correlates with high team performance, i.e., effective team process and high product quality. We used AEC Global Teamwork course offered in 2008–2009 as the testbed for our study to validate our hypothesis.     

Working Together Apart? Building a Knowledge‐Sharing Culture for Global Virtual Teams

A new impetus for greater knowledge‐sharing among team members needs to be emphasized due to the emergence of a significant new form of working known as ‘global virtual teams’. As information and communication technologies permeate every aspect of organizational life and impact the way teams communicate, work and structure relationships, global virtual teams require innovative communication and learning capabilities for different team members to effectively work together across cultural, organizational and geographical boundaries. Whereas information technology‐facilitated communication processes rely on technologically advanced systems to succeed, the ability to create a knowledge‐sharing culture within a global virtual team rests on the existence (and maintenance) of intra‐team respect, mutual trust, reciprocity and positive individual and group relationships. Thus, some of the inherent questions we address in our paper are: (1) what are the cross‐cultural challenges faced by global virtual teams?; (2) how do organizations develop a knowledge sharing culture to promote effective organizational learning among culturally‐diverse team members? and; (3) what are some of the practices that can help maximize the performance of global virtual teams? We conclude by examining ways that global virtual teams can be more effectively managed in order to reach their potential in this new interconnected world and put forward suggestions for further research.     

Computer-supported team-based learning: The impact of motivation,enjoyment and team contributions on learning outcomes

The benefits of teamwork and collaboration have long been advocated by many educational theories, such as constructivist and social learning models. Among the various applications of collaborative learning, the iterative team-based learning (TBL) process proposed by Michaelsen, Fink, and Knight (2002) has been successfully used in the classroom without computer support. This paper describes the implementation and evaluation results of a classroom application of the TBL process, which was modified to include computer mediation. We call this process computer-supported team-based learning (CS-TBL). This work extends learning in small teams from the traditional classroom to the hybrid classroom where students meet both face-to-face and online by emphasizing the importance of online team interactions. The outcomes are assessed through an evaluation model that considers the impact of motivation, enjoyment and team contributions on learning outcomes. The study results indicate that motivation influences the relationship between team interactions and perceived learning. Enjoyment is affected by motivation and perceptions of team members’ contributions, with the implication that students who perceive that the team interactions are adding value to their education will better enjoy learning and will experience higher-level learning outcomes.     

Sensemaking in military planning: a methodological study of command teams

Sensemaking, understanding how to deal with the situation at hand, has a central role in military command. This paper presents a method for measuring sensemaking performance in command teams during military planning. The method was tested in two experiments with Army captains serving as participants. The task was to produce parts of a brigade order within 6 h. The participants worked in teams of 5–7 individuals, 16 teams in the first experiment and 8 teams in the second experiment, with one team member acting as brigade commander. The independent variables were amount of information and type of communication, respectively. The characteristics of each team’s sensemaking process were assessed from video recordings of their planning sessions. The quality of their plans was judged by military experts. Although plan quality was unaffected by the experimental manipulations, the quality of the sensemaking process was related to the quality of the plans.