Study On Impacts Of Team Heterogeneity Upon Innovation Performance Of Research Team

Over the recent years, research teams as the birthplace of important technologicalinnovation have attracted wide attention from scholars. Research teams are synergicgroups which organize a group of people from different disciplines to engage in creativeand abstract analysis of information and technology. Therefore, integrating individualswith high heterogeneity and enhancing their creative performance is the cornerstone tosolve R&D problems. To open the black-box of mechanism of research member creativeperformance, this dissertation answered the question that “how team heterogeneitiesinfluence member creative performance” by in-depth analysis of the mediating role ofteam climate for innovation(TCI) and the moderating role of leader’s perspective takingand team interdependence.Specifically, this dissertation is going to be answered from five aspects:(1) How tomeasure individual innovation performance in research teams?(2) What are therelationships between team heterogeneities and individual innovation performance?（3）How do the team heterogeneities stimulate and improve research team member creativeperformance by the mediating role of TCI? And how does TCI play as a mediatingvariable?(4) How does leader’s perspective taking play as a moderating variable?(5)How does team interdependence play as a moderating variable?Based on the above issues, this dissertation used two research methods, includingcase study and empirical research. In the case study, this dissertation summarized andanalyzed the main features of the heterogeneity of research team, TCI, innovationperformance, leadership, and team interdependence. And some theoretical propositionsand empirical explanation for the empirical research were suggested. In the empiricalresearch, team-level and individual-level viabilities were studied by constructing amoderated mediation model. Specifically, in accordance with HLM method proposed byMuller, et al., this dissertation expanded the empirical study of150research team fromChina’s six "985" universities. The main research contents as following.Firstly, this research comprehensively reviewed the domestic and internationalexiting research1iteratures, defined the concept of research team, and did a comparative analysis to summarize the main features of research team. Then this research reviewedexiting1iteratures of heterogeneity’s definition, classification and related researches;this research also reviewed exiting1iteratures of TCI’s dimension and related researches.In addition, this research reviewed the theories and related research of perspectivetaking and team interdependence.Secondly, On the basis of abundant literature and documents, this research formeda preparatory conception of possible variables and the relationship between teamheterogeneities and member creative performance, and then puted forth the researchhypothesis and research model. Then the research detailed empirical study of thequestionnaire design process and measured scale reliability and validity.Thirdly, hierarchical linear modeling results using101leader-member dyads ofresearch teams indicated that task-related heterogeneities (professional heterogeneityand scientific tenure heterogeneity) are conducive to improve research team member’subjective and objective performance, and age heterogeneity has a negative effect.Despite previous studies have demonstrated that educational heterogeneity is related toinnovation significantly, this hypothesis was not supported by this HLM analysis. Thisresearch also suggested that some characteristics of team diversity play a cross-levelimpact on member creative performance through team climate for innovation.Fourthly, by building a moderated mediation model, this research also focused onthe effects of the mediating role of leader perspective taking ability and teaminterdependence. The moderating pattern showed that the relationship between teamclimate for innovation and member performance becomes stronger as leader perspectivetaking growing from low to high. Furthermore, the conditional indirect effect test alsoshowed that the mediating effect of team climate for innovation on diversity–memberperformance linkage is significant only when the level of leader perspective taking ishigh. The same mediating effect of team interdependence was supported.