What Makes Creative Teams Tick? Cohesion, Engagement and Performance across Creativity Tasks: A three wave study

Abstract

The present study proposes a research model to examine the meditational mechanism of collective engagement in the relationship between team cohesion and team creative performance. A reciprocal process was expected to unfold across creativity task episodes: (1) team cohesion leads to collective task engagement which in turn has a positive effect on team creative performance (perceived team performance and independently rated creativity), and (2) perceived team creative performance predicts the development of future team cohesion. The study relied on a three-wave longitudinal organizational simulation exercise, in which 118 project teams (605 individuals) conducted three creativity tasks. This study advances collective task engagement as a crucial mediational process underlying a team’s performance on creative activities.