Handbook of Organizational Creativity

Michael D. Mumford, Michael D. Mumford

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780080879109
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Industrial & Organizational Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Handbook of Organizational Creativity is designed to explain creativity and innovation in organizations. This handbook contains 28 chapters dedicated to particularly complex phenomena, all written by leading experts in the field of organizational creativity. The format of the book follows the multi-level structure of creativity in organizations where creativity takes place at the individual level, the group level, and the organizational level. Beyond just theoretical frameworks, applications and interventions are also emphasized. This topic will be of particular interest to managers of creative personnel, and managers that see the potential benefit of creativity to their organizations.

• Information is presented in a manner such that students, researchers, and managers alike should have much to gain from the present handbook
• Variables such as idea generation, affect, personality, expertise, teams, leadership, and planning, among many others, are discussed
• Specific practical interventions are discussed that involve training, development, rewards, and organizational development
• Provides a summary of the field's history, the current state of the field, as well as viable directions for future research

Part C

Group Level Influences

Chapter 13 Team Creativity and Innovation

Chapter 14 Collaborative Creativity—Group Creativity and Team Innovation

Chapter 15 Creativity and Innovation

Chapter 16 Creativity and the Work Context

Chapter 17 Project Management of Innovative Teams

Chapter 18 Leadership of Creativity

Chapter 13

Team Creativity and Innovation

The Effect of Group Composition, Social Processes, and Cognition

Roni Reiter-Palmon¹, Ben Wigert² and Triparna de Vreede², ¹University of Nebraska at Omaha, Department of Psychology and Center for Collaboration Science, Omaha, NE, ²University of Nebraska at Omaha, Department of Psychology, Omaha, NE

Much of the early work on organizational creativity focused on the individual, and the role of individual differences in explaining creative production. Within this approach, teams were viewed as providing the social context that facilitates or inhibits individual creativity (Amabile, 1996; Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin, 1993). While earlier work neglected the team as the unit of analysis, recently the direct role of teams in the development of creative products or ideas has been the focus of more research.

There are several reasons for the emergence of interest in team creativity and innovation. As a result of changes in technology, increased globalizations and competition, and a knowledge-based economy, the problems facing organizations are so complex that a single individual does not possess all the knowledge necessary to solve these problems, and teams have been viewed as the solution to this problem (Kozlowski & Bell, 2008). These same issues have also been suggested as underlying the need for creativity and innovation in organizations (Ford & Gioia, 1995; Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004; West, Hirst, Richter, & Shipton, 2004). A second reason for the emergence of the interest in teams is that they provide additional performance benefits, such as access to diverse information, diverse perspectives, and the ability to capitalize on the varied skills of the team members (Tesluk, Farr, & Klein, 1997). As a result, reliance on teams has increased steadily in organizations (Edmondson & Roloff, 2009).

Third, in recent years team adaptation has been viewed as being “at the heart of team effectiveness” (Burke, Stagl, Salas, Pierce, & Kendell, 2006). Burke et al. define team adaptation as:

“a change in team performance, in response to a salient cue or cue stream, that leads to a functional outcome for the entire team. Team adaptation is manifested in the innovation of new or modification of existing structures, capacities, and/or behavioral or cognitive goal-directed actions” (p. 1190).

While team adaptation is conceptually different from team creativity and innovation, the two are related, as it can include creativity and innovation, although being broader and manifested in other ways.

Finally, another reason for the increased interest in team creativity beyond that of context is the development of models that suggest that some team properties can be emergent (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000). Kozlowski and Klein define emergence as a phenomenon that:

“originates in the cognition, affect, behaviors, or other characteristics of individuals, is amplified by their interactions, and manifests as a higher-level, collective phenomenon” (p. 55).

This suggests that to understand the role of teams in creative production, we must not only view teams as background, or social context to the individual, but rather, through emergence, team creativity may be a very different phenomenon from that of the individual.

In this chapter we will review the research to date on team creativity and innovation. For the purpose of organizing this chapter, we will adopt the typical Input–Process–Output (I-P-O) model of team effectiveness (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006; Salas, Burke, & Stagl, 2004). We will focus on team composition in terms of individual characteristics of team members as input. Processes are the activities that team members engage in to solve the problem or carry out the task. Specifically, we will focus on two major classes of team processes; team social processes and team cognition. Team output is defined as team creativity and innovation. The interactive effect of these input and process variables will also be considered. Finally, we will provide directions for future research as well as practical implications of the research reviewed.

Before discussing team creativity and the factors that affect it, it is important to clarify two issues. The first is the distinction between teams and groups. Some researchers differentiate the two terms, but in many cases these are used interchangeably (Paulus, Nakui, Putnam, & Brown, 2005). In organizational psychology, preference is given to the concept of teams over groups (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006), which we will use here. The second distinction is between creativity and innovation. Some researchers use these terms interchangeably. Others suggest that creativity involves the generation of ideas, whereas innovation includes both idea generation and implementation (Anderson, De Dreu, & Nijstad, 2004). Finally, others suggest that creativity is viewed as the generation of ideas and solutions, whereas innovation is defined as the implementation of these ideas and solutions in the organization (West, 2002; West et al., 2004). For the purpose of this chapter, we will use this last approach, with creativity defined as the early phases of idea generation, and innovation as the later phases of implementation.

Team Composition

The composition of the team has been recognized as an important input variable in many models of team performance as well as in models of team creativity and innovation (Ilgen, Hollenbeck, Johnson, & Jundt, 2005; Woodman et al., 1993). Team composition covers a wide breadth of variables including demographics, job-relevant characteristics such as education or relevant knowledge, skills and abilities, and personality characteristics. Research on team composition tends to use one of two measurement approaches. The first focuses on aggregation or averaging a variable across team members (Stewart, 2006), and the second on the degree of diversity of team members with respect to the variables of interest (Hulsheger, Anderson, & Saldago, 2009; West & Anderson, 1996). Diversity has been defined in different ways (Harrison & Klein, 2007). In some cases it has been defined by the distribution of the characteristic in question (are all departments represented?), and in others by variance or range of scores. Early work in the area of team composition and creativity assumed that diversity in team composition would be beneficial, and increase the creative output of teams, as a result of the diverse knowledge and experiences of the team members (Guzzo & Dickson, 1996; McLeod, Lobel, & Cox, 1996).

Demographic Diversity

Much of the research on team diversity has found demographic diversity to be detrimental to team processes as well as team outcomes in general (Kirkman, Tesluk, & Rosen, 2004; Mathieu, Maynard, Rapp, & Gilson, 2008; Timmerman, 2000). Studies evaluating team creativity and innovation in relation to demographic diversity have found mixed results. For example, O’Reilly, Williams, and Barsade (1998) found moderate positive effects for racial diversity on creativity and innovation; however, gender and tenure diversity had no effect. On the other hand, Paletz, Peng, Erez, and Maslach (2004) reported no differences in creativity between ethnically diverse and ethnically homogenous teams, and McLeod et al. (1996) found ethnic diversity to hinder team creativity. Choi (2007) found that groups that were diverse in terms of gender were less creative, whereas groups with age diversity were more creative. Curseu (2010) found that team diversity (defined as gender, age, and national diversity combined) was moderately and positively related to the creativity of team output. Adding to the complexity, Baer, Oldham, Jacobson, and Hollingshead (2008) found that demographic diversity was negatively related to team creativity in an initial task, but not in a later task. Recently, a meta-analysis indicated non-significant effects for the relationship between demographic diversity and team creativity and innovation (Hulsheger et al., 2009).

The results of these studies suggest that the relationship between creativity and demographic diversity may be more complex than initially thought. It is possible that different variables (age vs. gender vs. ethnic diversity) will have different effects on creativity and innovation. The research by Baer et al. is also intriguing as it suggests that time and experience in a team may moderate the effects of diversity on creativity and innovation.

Functional Diversity

Demographic diversity is easily detected and observed, and therefore, may be more salient. However, differences based on attributes that are relevant to job performance, such as diversity in education, function in the organization, and job-relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities, while not initially salient can also influence team creativity (Milliken, Bartel, & Kutzberg, 2003). Models of team creativity indicate that it is this type of diversity—functional diversity—that facilitates creativity in teams (Woodman et al., 1993). Most research evaluating functional diversity found positive effects, suggesting that teams comprised of members from different and diverse functional backgrounds outperform homogeneous teams in terms of creativity and innovation (Fay, Borrill, Amir, Haward, & West, 2006; Keller, 2001). However, Ancona and Caldwell (1992), using 45 new product teams, found that functional background diversity was related to lower evaluations of innovation, that is, diverse teams were evaluated as less innovative. A recent meta-analysis suggested that functional diversity is positively related to team creativity and innovation (Hulsheger et al., 2009).

Taken together, these results indicate that functional diversity is positively related to creativity and innovation. However, researchers typically do not distinguish between various aspects of functional diversity such as educational background, function in the organization, and expertise. Additional research is needed to determine whether these variables have similar effects on creativity and innovation.

In addition to functional and demographic diversity, other forms of diversity have been hypothesized to influence creativity and innovation in teams. Individual difference variables that can influence individual and team cognitive processes as well as social processes have been speculated as having an influence on team creative output (Shalley, 2008). Specifically, individual differences in cognitive style, social skills, and personality variables that influence team interactions, such as extraversion and agreeableness, have been suggested as important for team functioning (Klein, DeRouin, & Salas, 2006; Stevens & Campion, 1994). However, research on the effects of team composition and diversity evaluating these variables is sparse (Kozlowski & Ilgen, 2006).

Cognitive Style and Personality

Kutzberg (2005), in two studies examining the effect of cognitive style on creative performance in teams, found that diversity in cognitive style was positively related to fluency (number of ideas generated), but negatively related to member perceptions of creative performance. Basadur and Head (2001) found that teams composed of members with heterogeneous cognitive styles outperformed homogeneous teams, indicating that diversity in cognitive style can have an important impact on team creativity and innovation. Additionally, teams that include more individuals who are creative tend to show greater creativity (Mathisen, Martinsen, & Einarsen, 2008; Taggar, 2002). Chirumboli, Mannetti, Pierro, Areni, and Kruglanski (2005) investigated average need for closure across team members and its relationship to team creativity. High need for closure groups relative to low need for closure groups generated more ideas, but the degree of elaboration and the creativity of those ideas was lower. The relationship is most likely due to need for closure restricting hypothesis generation as well as the production of conventional ideas.

Barry and Stewart (1997) evaluated the role of team composition, based on the proportion of extraverts and conscientiousness individuals in the group, on creative problem solving. They found that groups that had some extraverted members outperformed groups with no extraverted members, as well as groups in which more than 50% of the members were extraverted. However, no effect was found for conscientiousness. Robert and Cheung (2010) found that teams that were high in conscientiousness were less creative. In a follow-up study, Robert and Cheung found that team conscientiousness interacted with instructions such that low conscientiousness teams performed better when task instructions allowed for flexibility in how the task was completed and that high conscientiousness teams performed better when task instructions called for a systematic approach.

Results from a study by Baer et al. (2008) paint a more complex picture, suggesting ...