The effects of high‐involvement work systems and shared leadership on team creativity: A multilevel investigation

Abstract

Understanding how to effectively stimulate creative potential in the workplace through strategic human resource management (HRM) practices is critical to enhancing organizational competitiveness. This study investigates the effects of high‐involvement work systems (HIWS) on team creativity in terms of ability–motivation–opportunity theory and a team input–process–output model. It draws on a data set consisting of 668 employees from 112 teams in 41 organizations in China. The results reveal that HIWS are positively related to team creativity, not only directly, but also indirectly through a sequential mediating mechanism of involvement climate and shared leadership. We argue that when employees are placed in an autonomous work environment underpinned by HIWS, they will be more likely to be involved in creative activities and engage in mutual influence behaviors in their work teams, and lead each other to achieve a higher level of creativity. Our study extends the knowledge on strategic HRM/HIWS, shared leadership, and creativity.

The Emergence of Shared Leadership in Innovation Labs

“…They also identified a moderating influence of transformational leadership by a designated team leader. Empirical evidence for a direct positive influence of shared leadership on team creativity was found for undergraduate student teams ( Lee et al, 2015 ; Sun et al, 2016 ), organizational teams ( Ali et al, 2020 ; Cavazotte and de Paula, 2020 ; Song et al, 2020 ), and inter-organizational teams ( Gu et al, 2018 ). Aime et al (2014 , p. 328) confirmed this positive influence on team creativity for the related concept of “power heterarchy” based on a sample of cross-functional student teams, stating that less-hierarchical teams are enabled “to leverage the diverse and unique capabilities of individual members”.…”

High‐involvement human resource practices and their impact on organizational ambidexterity: The mediating role of employees' ambidextrous behaviors

“…It has been argued in the literature that highinvolvement HR practices (staffing, training, compensation, performance appraisal, work design, participation) may encourage employees to take the initiative to address new issues, and to cooperate and achieve organizational goals (Collins & Smith, 2006;Ghoshal & Bartlett, 1994). Song et al (2020) argue that the climate of involvement created by high-involvement HR practices provide employees with power, reward, and knowledge, and hence will encourage them to come up with creative ideas and take initiatives. In addition, Úbeda-García et al (2017) argued that HR flexibility (skill flexibility, behavior flexibility, and practices flexibility) that depends on employees' management practices affects organizations' ability to undertake exploration and exploitation processes simultaneously through encouraging employees to come up with new ideas and generate new knowledge.…”

Extending the frontier of research on (strategic) human resource management in China: a review of David Lepak and colleagues’ influence and future research direction

“…Given that team and unit constitute an important base for stimulating creativity and innovation at individual, team and organizational levels (e.g. Gong et al, 2013a;Song et al, 2020), this is an area that more research attention can be directed to. We can also observe that about one-third of the empirical studies heeded Lepak's call for more multi-level studies in the field of HRM (Lepak et al, 2007).…”