Different strokes for different teams:the contingent effects of positive and negative feedback on the creativity of informationally homogeneous and diverse teams

Abstract

Feedback is a ubiquitous management tool. Employing this tool to meet the new challenge of enhancing team creativity, raises the important question of whether positive or negative feedback is more effective. Unfortunately prior research on feedback valence and creativity is limited to the individual level, neglecting team creativity’s interdependent and knowledge-intensive nature. We address this issue and advance the team information processing perspective on team creativity by integrating two heretofore separate research streams to develop a team-specific model about how negative and positive feedback enhance creativity via two alternative information processing routes, contingent on teams’ informational diversity. Negative feedback fuels teams’ systematic effort and attention to external, novel information. In informationally diverse teams, in which members hold different information and perspectives, these efforts promote team creativity through information elaboration. Conversely, positive feedback propels members to flexibly use their information and contribute the resultant divergent insights to the team. In informationally homogeneous teams, where these insights relate to others’ information and perspectives, these divergent insights trigger teams’ generative processing and in turn creativity. Results from a team experiment support the predicted feedback valence by informational diversity interaction on team creativity through elaboration and generative processing.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2016.0642
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School > Work & Organisational Psychology
College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School
Additional Information: © 2018, Academy of Management. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Uncontrolled Keywords: Creativity,Group/team processes , Lab experiment
Publication ISSN: 0001-4273
Last Modified: 25 Mar 2024 08:24
Date Deposited: 25 Jan 2018 13:55
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://amj.aom. ... 6.0642.abstract (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2018-12-11
Published Online Date: 2017-10-27
Accepted Date: 2017-10-22
Authors: Hoever, Inga
Zhou, Jing
Van Knippenberg, Daniel L (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-0269-8102)

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