Team Knowledge Diversity and Team Creativity: The Moderating Role of Status Inequality

Abstract

We examined the relationship between team task knowledge diversity and team creativity, and the moderating role of team status inequality, with a focus on organizational tenure and rank inequality. By adopting an input–process–output framework, we hypothesized that teams would achieve high levels of creativity when they have a large pool of task-relevant expertise that is differentiated and specialized among team members, but the relationship would be weakened when team members have different statuses. We tested our hypotheses using data from 325 teams of employees at 10 companies in South Korea. Results showed that task knowledge diversity was positively associated with team creativity and a team's status inequality in terms of organizational tenure moderated the relationship in a negative way. Our findings contribute to the literature on team creativity by providing new insights regarding how status inequality, which is almost ubiquitous in workplaces, plays a role in a dynamic team process for creativity.

Entrepreneurial Team Knowledge Diversity and Creativity: A Multilevel Analysis of Knowledge Sharing, Individual Creativity, and Team Creativity

“…Finally, our study explores the diversity-creativity link in entrepreneurial teams with a field nested dataset from venture teams, especially in the domain of high-tech industries in China. Thus, our findings provide some of the first empirical evidence to examine how knowledge-based diversity of entrepreneurial teams facilitates TC potential, given that the prior studies on diversity-creativity relationships have been most concerned with working teams, R&D teams, and TMTs (e.g., Shin and Zhou, 2007;Buyl et al, 2011;Wang et al, 2016;Park et al, 2018;Sung and Choi, 2019;Guo et al, 2021).…”

“…In this vein, team members with various social backgrounds block intrateam communication and joint efforts toward collective performance (van der Vegt, 2002 ; Cunningham and Sagas, 2004 ; Harrison and Klein, 2007 ). Given that the current literature has mixed ends about this relationship (Shin and Zhou, 2007 ; Hülsheger et al, 2009 ; van Knippenberg and Hoever, 2017 ; Park et al, 2018 ), these deficiencies necessitate a call for more research on the diversity–TC link (Wang et al, 2016 ).…”

“…Prior studies on the relationship between knowledge diversity and TC have omitted the idea-sharing process in the team. Further research is recommended to directly explore the idea-sharing intention of team members using a multilevel model (Park et al, 2018 ). Accordingly, this study attends to examine KS as a key mediating mechanism through which team diversity leads to TC.…”

“…Notwithstanding the significance of exploring the effect of knowledge-based diversity on collective-level creativity (e.g., team-level creativity), few current studies have applied a multilevel approach to take the levels at which model constructs are measured into account. Specifically, although various mediating mechanisms have been involved in exploring the diversity–creativity link by prior studies, there are some flaws in that these studies have been mostly conducted only at the single-level or same-level analysis and assessment [e.g., educational specialization heterogeneity → TC at the team level, Shin and Zhou ( 2007 ); team knowledge diversity → TC at the team level, Park et al ( 2018 ); team diversity → creativity of work teams at the team level, Sung and Choi ( 2019 ); or educational level diversity → TC at the team level, Guo et al ( 2021 )]. In this respect, a small body of prior studies have applied the multilevel approach to analyze the effect of team-level knowledge-based diversity on individual-level KS and TMC, which in turn fosters team-level creativity.…”

Activating the Benefit of Diversity Through Team Role Clarity and Implicit Coordination

“…The task knowledge diversity in our study, thus, is consistent with the conceptualization of variety. We define task knowledge diversity as “the degree to which a team’s reservoir of task-relevant knowledge and skills is distributed and specialized among team members” (Park et al, 2018, p. 1613).…”