Does joint decision making foster team creativity? Exploring the moderating and mediating effects
| Published date | 06 November 2017 |
| Date | 06 November 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-03-2016-0055 |
| Pages | 1590-1604 |
| Author | Weixiao Guo,Duanxu Wang |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Global HRM |
Does joint decision making foster
team creativity? Exploring the
moderating and mediating effects
Weixiao Guo
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, and
Duanxu Wang
School of Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential moderating role of team membership
change in the relationship between joint decision making and team creativity and to determine whether team
psychological safety mediates the moderating effect.
Design/methodology/approach –Survey data from multiple sources on 78 teams were collected in the
People’s Republic of China. Confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression analysis were adopted
to analyze the data.
Findings –The hypothesized mediated moderation model is supported. The results indicate that joint
decision making is more positively related to team creativity under lower levels of team membership change
and team psychological safety is a significant intermediate mechanism between the moderating effect and
team creativity.
Research limitations/implications –The cross-sectional design of this study is insufficient to support the
causal inferences in the theoretical model; therefore, further longitudinal or laboratory research is required.
In addition, other possible boundary conditions and underlying mechanisms have yet to be tested.
Originality/value –The present paper complements the extant studies, which mainly focus on the
implication of leadership empowerment behaviors for individual outcomes, by examining the impact of joint
decision making on team creativity and, further, reveals when and how joint decision making is more likely to
foster team creativity, which extends the literature on leadership and team creativity.
Keywords Empowering, Team psychological safety, Team creativity, Team membership change,
Joint decision making, Participative leadership
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Recent decades have witnessed a trend toward providing increased control and autonomy to
team members to enhance flexibility and creativity (Ahearne et al., 2005; Arnold et al., 2000;
Chen et al., 2007; Gebert et al., 2003; Srivastava et al., 2006; Vecchio et al., 2010; Zhang and
Bartol, 2010). Joint decision making is one of the most popular leadership behaviors adopted
to facilitate empowerment. It involves the supervisor inviting and incorporating the
opinions of team members during the decision-making process (Arnold et al., 2000;
Kahai et al., 1997; Koopman and Wierdsma, 1998; Miao et al., 2014). Joint decision making
has been widely acknowledged to offer teams original and useful ideas by providing equal
and open opportunities that allow team members to express themselves and to integrate
one another’s perspectives (Chen et al., 2011; Gao et al., 2011; Srivastava et al., 2006).
However, although great efforts have been devoted to examining the impact of leadership
empowerment behaviors on employee creativity (Zhang and Bartol, 2010; Zhang and
Zhou, 2014), much less is known about their implications for the creativity of the entire team.
Notably, the implementation of joint decision making does not always achieve the
desired effects (e.g. Forrester, 2000; Gebert et al., 2003). Scholars have recently proposed that
the realization of the benefits of joint decision making may be more complex than originally
Personnel Review
Vol. 46 No. 8, 2017
pp. 1590-1604
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0048-3486
DOI 10.1108/PR-03-2016-0055
Received 16 March 2016
Revised 9 November 2016
Accepted 6 February 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0048-3486.htm
This study supported by The Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71672175).
1590
PR
46,8
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