Research On The Mechanisms Of Knowledge Heterogeneity On Creativity Of Knowledge Teams

In the current era of knowledge economy, organizations become increasingly dependent on knowledge teams to develop creative solutions and respond to the rapidly changing environment. Knowledge teams could access to a wide range of perspective and create new knowledge, through the integration of the unique knowledge or skills of experts in different fields. Knowledge heterogeneity is a typical characteristic of knowledge teams, and is also an important factor to inspire team creativity. However, knowledge heterogeneity cannot always have a positive impact on team creativity. It also may limit the effective knowledge sharing and create a lot of negative issues. Therefore, it is necessary to reveal the mechanisms of knowledge heterogeneity on team creativity, to explain the different outcomes produced by knowledge heterogeneity. This study examined that mechanisms based on the interactive cognitive perspective, by different means of theoretical analysis, experimental research, case study and questionnaire surveys.Study1expounded the cognitive process of team creativity based on the literature analysis of team cognition, creativity and so on. Three core processes were identified, including problem identification and problem construction, information search and gathering, and idea generation. Then, different perspectives of team cognition were compared, which implied that the traditional shared cognitive perspective is not applicable to analyze knowledge teams, since it tends to ignore the dynamic team processes. In contrast, the interactive cognitive perspective helps to explain the effect of knowledge heterogeneity on the creativity of knowledge teams.Study2examined the influence of knowledge heterogeneity and individual team member creativity on team creativity. The study designed the Chinese Remote Associates Test (CRAT) items and the task measured team creativity in the same logic, and carried out experimental studies to explore these issues. The conclusion showed that the relationship between individual team member creativity and team creativity was not significant, but the more heterogeneous the team knowledge was, the more creative the team would be. Also, there was a significant interactive effect for knowledge heterogeneity and individual team member creativity on team creativity.Study3explored the relationships between knowledge heterogeneity, cognitive conflicts and team member creativity. Flexible and dynamic knowledge exchange between team members to correlate heterogeneous expertise is crucial for the implementation of knowledge activities on knowledge teams. Drawing on the social network analysis and using a case study, by selecting the teams in the Integrity and Security Development Division at Alibaba B2B Company as research subjects, the study identified three characteristics of knowledge-exchange relationships on knowledge teams—namely, accuracy, reciprocity, and multiplexity—and empirically investigate the relationships between the different ways of heterogeneous knowledge exchange, cognitive conflicts, and creativity.Study4examined the mechanisms of knowledge heterogeneity on the creativity of knowledge teams. The creativity of knowledge teams is not only influenced by the heterogeneous knowledge in teams and individual team member creativity, but also depends on the cognitive interactions between them. Using the method of hierarchical linear modeling, the study examined how cognitive conflicts and task knowledge coordination influenced the relationships between knowledge heterogeneity and team or team member creativity. The study indicated that the cognitive conflict plays a significant mediating role in the relationship between knowledge heterogeneity and team or team member creativity, and that task knowledge coordination has moderating effect on that relationship. When the level of task knowledge coordination is high, knowledge heterogeneity is positively correlated to team or team member’s creativity. However, when there’s low task knowledge coordination, knowledge heterogeneity presents an inverted-U relation with team creativity, but no significant relation with individual team member creativity.Compared with the existing research, the innovative points of this research mainly display in the following three aspects:(1) clarifying the cognitive processes of team creativity, building the theoretical model of the emergence of team cognition, and pointing out that the interactive cognitive perspective is suitable for explaining the mechanisms of the creativity on knowledge teams;(2) using various research methods to examined the mechanisms of knowledge heterogeneity on creativity of knowledge teams, including the experimental study with the designed measurement tasks, the case study combined with network analysis approach and the questionnaire surveys based on the hierarchical linear model;(3) constructing the relationship model of knowledge heterogeneity on team creativity from the perspective of interactive cognition, and testing the influences of team member creativity, cognitive conflicts and task knowledge coordination in this model.