Status Competition-caused Team Faultlines And Its Effects On Team Creativity

The relationship between team faultlines and team creativity has been a hot topic in the past two decades. However, the research results of the relationship are quite incongruent among different studies. Previous researches had empirically tested the influences of certain factors on team creativity, such as the strength or states of faultlines, the number of subteams, and subteam size evenness. Unfortunately, those researches neglected the significance of distinguishing the different types of team faultlines. Various types of team faultlines may appear in the same strength, and the similar states as well as the same number of subteams. Therefore, it is crucial to focus on distinguishing the type of team faultlines other than aforementioned factors. This research explores the relationships and mechanisms between status competition-caused team faultlines and team creativity based on the theory of social distance, by effectively distinguishing and defining the types of status competition-caused team faultlines.Firstly, we outline the definition of status competition-caused team faultlines and its types according to our systematic literature review, and then extract the construct of status competition-caused team faultlines and build the influencing factors model as well as the conceptual model following the procedure of grounded theory based research. We also extract the relationships and mechanisms between status competition-caused team faultlines and team creativity through the analysis suggested by grounded theory. Theoretical analysis, hypothesis and empirical test upon the aforementioned conceptual models are then put forward.This dissertation includes two studies in two research stages. In research stage 1 in the first study, the method of depth interview and grounded theory analysis are adopted, the data of about 239000 words are collected and coded after having interviewed 30 members over 23 hours in 14 representative teams about their experiences of status competition-based team faultlines. Then the A type and B type of status competition-caused team faultlines were constructed through analyzing the data, as well as building the influencing factors model and theoretical conceptual model about status competition-caused team faultlines and team creativity. In the second stage, empirical tests are conducted to further test the influencing mechanism of status competition-caused faultlines on team creativity. The total samples including 60 A type teams with 425 members and 45 B type teams with 287 members.Qualitative research results show that high status employees high dependence on low status while high heterogeneity in the status goals between those members causes the team to be horizontal decomposition and longitudinal integration, and divide the team into two or more than two subteams. Which was named as A type status competition-caused team faultlines. In contrast, that high status employees low dependence on low status while high homogeneity in the status goals between those members causes the team to be longitudinal decomposition and horizontal integration, and divide the team into two or more than two subteams, which was named as B type status competition-caused team faultlines. Refining this two types of constructs not only provides the necessary theoretical basis for the empirical research in this dissertation, but also provides a new research idea for other scholars to study team faultlines and their effects in the future.The results of empirical test show that:(1) Different types of status competition-caused team faultlines cause significant difference in team creativity and social distance. More specifically, the team creativity of A type higher than B type, however, the social distance of B type higher than A type.(2) Different types of status competition-caused team faultlines interaction with status stability influence on team creativity are different, although both A and B type of status competition-caused team faultlines'interaction with status stability are negatively influence on team creativity respectively, however, the influence of A type is more significantly than B type. And different types of status competition-caused team faultlines'interaction with status stability influence on social distance are different, although both A and B type of status competition-caused team faultlines interaction with status stability have positive influence on social distance, respectively, however, A type has more significant effect than B type.(3) The mediated effect of team social distance. The results show that team social distance partially mediates the relationship between the interaction of A type of status competition-caused team faultlines with status stability and team creativity, as well as completely mediates the relationship between the interaction of B type of team faultlines' interaction with status stability and team creativity. The shared vision negatively moderated on the negative relationship between A/B type of team faultlines'interaction with status stability and team creativity, respectively. The shared vision increase team creativity by lowing the social distance indirectly among these two types of teams.(4) The results also show that team leaders can achieve higher team creativity by setting up not low but high shared vision. Specifically, shared vision negatively moderated the negative influential relationship between both A and B type of team faultlines'interaction with status stability on team creativity, however, the negative moderating effect of A type is more significantly than B type. Shared vision negatively moderated the negative influential relationship between both A and B type of team faultlines'interaction with status stability on social distance, however, the negative moderating effect of A type is more significantly than B type in similarly.At last, main conclusions were summarized and discussed, and the research limitations and future directions were also provided.