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Reflection Toward Creativity: Team Reflexivity as a Linking Mechanism Between Team Goal Orientation and Team Creative Performance

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Abstract

Purpose

This study aims at testing the mediating role of team reflexivity in the relationships between team learning, performance-prove, and performance-avoid goal orientations and team creative performance and assessing the relative importance of the three types of team goal orientation in team reflexivity and creative performance.

Methodology

We conducted Study 1 on 68 student teams by using a two-wave time-lagged design. In Study 2, we carried out a cross-sectional field study on 108 intact work teams in diverse Korean companies.

Findings

Team learning goal orientation was significantly associated with team creative performance. While team learning and performance-prove goal orientations were equally influential in predicting team reflexivity, team performance-avoid goal orientation had no relationship with team reflexivity and creative performance. Team reflexivity mediated the relationships between team learning and performance-prove goal orientations and team creative performance.

Implications

By revealing that team learning and performance-prove goal orientations can contribute to team creative performance through the facilitation of team reflective process, this study provides practitioners with insight into critical antecedents and team process that are conducive to the creative performance of work teams.

Originality/Value

This is one of the first studies to explore a mediating mechanism between team goal orientation and creative performance. This study attends to the role of team reflexivity as a key team-regulatory process that underlies the relationship between team goal orientation and team performance. Furthermore, the use of multiple studies in different contexts strengthens the robustness of the study findings.

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Notes

  1. The eliminated item was “Our team members often read materials related to work to master the skills.”

  2. Because the participating teams were nested in 14 companies, we explored the possibility that team members’ responses varied across the 14 companies by using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). The results of HLM showed no significant random effect in the null model, suggesting that team members’ responses were not affected by organizational characteristics.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the research fund of Hanyang University (HY-2016). We are grateful to Sabine Sonnentag and two anonymous reviewers for comments and feedback that greatly improved our manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

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

    Yuhyung Shin, Mihee Kim & Sang-Hoon Lee

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  1. Yuhyung Shin
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  2. Mihee Kim
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  3. Sang-Hoon Lee
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Correspondence to Yuhyung Shin.

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Shin, Y., Kim, M. & Lee, SH. Reflection Toward Creativity: Team Reflexivity as a Linking Mechanism Between Team Goal Orientation and Team Creative Performance. J Bus Psychol 32, 655–671 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-016-9462-9

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