Promoting Innovative Performance in Multidisciplinary Teams: The Roles of Paradoxical Leadership and Team Perspective Taking

Abstract

Although many researches recognize the role of team expertise diversity in providing different ideas, it remains unclear how and under which conditions these various ideas are elaborated and integrated to fuel team innovation. To address this question, we develop a model theorizing that paradoxical leadership helps diverse teams overcome the differentiating-integrating paradox to promote innovation. Moreover, we further theorize that paradoxical leadership will cultivate perspective taking among team members. Analyses of the multi-time and multi-source data from 98 teams suggest that teams with expertise diversity exhibit better innovative performance when paradoxical leadership is prevalent. Furthermore, team perspective taking mediates the positive moderating effects of paradoxical leadership on the relationship between expertise diversity and innovative performance. Through these analyses, this study not only addresses the innovation paradox of expertise diverse teams from the perspective of leader influence, but also enriches the understanding of the effects of paradoxical leadership.

Innovation Opportunities in Sport Management

“…Additionally, flash teams appear to empower every person on the team engaging each person's best talent regardless of position or title. Li et al (2018) contend businesses are engaging in multidisciplinary teams with varying degrees of education and talents to spark the innovation needed for societal and industry changes. Information-sharing appears to be critical in developing multidisciplinary teams so that members can determine their role and make relevant contributions (Uitdewilligen & Waller, 2018).…”

“…Interestingly, expert knowledge of the project does not suggest improved team effectiveness. In fact, Li et al (2018) suggest a basic understanding of the project creates the freedom to explore ideas that may not be explored by experts. Therefore, soft skills and personality fit appear to be more critical to multidisciplinary teams than expertise.…”

How does paradoxical leadership promote bootlegging: a TPB-based multiple mediation model

“…In the long term, this builds stronger employee self-confidence in completing innovative tasks like bootlegging (Mittal and Dhar, 2015). On the other hand, leaders embracing employees’ individualization means they respect employees and allow them to use their personal strengths and capabilities to develop new work areas beyond normal duties (Li et al , 2018; Zhang et al , 2015). Employees will then have a stronger willingness to explore innovative work in personalized and creative ways (Li et al , 2018), which also means employees have a more optimistic attitude to innovative behaviors including bootlegging.…”

Does Paradoxical Leadership Facilitate Leaders’ Task Performance? A Perspective of Self-Regulation Theory

“…Emphasizing the coexistence of mutually independent elements, paradoxical leadership is a process that is based on personal characteristics and cognition, using a “both-and” strategy instead of an “either-or” strategy to resolve organizational paradoxes [ 1 ]. Research has documented the benefits of paradoxical leadership for employees, teams, and organizations; for example, positive impacts include the following: employees’ proficiency, adaptability, proactivity [ 1 ], voice [ 2 ], creativity [ 3 , 4 ], ambidexterity [ 5 ], resilience [ 6 ], in-role and innovative performance behavior [ 7 ], team perspective-taking, and innovative performance [ 8 ], as well as organizational creativity [ 9 ], ambidextrous innovation [ 10 ], and strategic agility [ 11 ].…”