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Collective efficacy as a mediator between cooperative group norms and group positive affect and team creativity

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Abstract

In spite of a growing body of research on creativity in team contexts, very few researchers have paid attention to the team-level antecedents and mediating processes of team creativity. To fill this gap, drawing on social cognitive theory and Dzindolet’s group creativity process model, this study examined cooperative group norms and group positive affect as antecedents of team creativity and explored collective efficacy as an intermediary mechanism between these relationships. The current study was conducted with 97 work teams from 12 different South Korean organizations. As predicted, the results demonstrated that cooperative group norms and group positive affect were positively associated with team creativity, and that collective efficacy mediated these relationships. The findings offer theoretical and practical implications regarding the creativity of work teams.

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Notes

  1. In this study, we use the terms “team” and “group” interchangeably.

  2. Because the respondents were nested in 12 companies, we checked the possibility that team members’ responses varied among the 12 companies by using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). The results of HLM showed no significant random effect in the null model (u 0 = .00, p = n.s.), which suggests that team members’ responses were not affected by organizational characteristics. Because the random effect in the null model was not significant, we could not proceed to perform HLM in our hypothesis testing.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the research fund of Hanyang University (HY-2015).

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  1. Hanyang University, Wangsimni-ro, 222, Seongdong-gu, Seoul, South Korea, 133-791

    Mihee Kim & Yuhyung Shin

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Kim, M., Shin, Y. Collective efficacy as a mediator between cooperative group norms and group positive affect and team creativity. Asia Pac J Manag 32, 693–716 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-015-9413-4

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