The Dual Effects Of The Creative Star’s Social Network Position On Team Radical Creativity

Innovation has become an important source of inexhaustible power of development and progress of science and technology.Innovation is the main characteristic of economic and social development in the present.In particular,radical innovation has become an important factor for organization to maintain long-term competitiveness.With the increasing complexity of knowledge,no one can have all the knowledge required by radical innovation.Teams become important units of organizational innovation.At the same time,organizations are concerned about innovation,and more concerned about innovative talents.More and more organizations place the competition for talents on the top of human resource management.The “war of talent” has become more and more intensive.In particular,the creative stars who show exceptional and outstanding innovative ability have become the objects that the organizations fight for at all costs.How to take advantage of creative stars to improve radical innovative ability? Not only organizations pay much attention to this question,it is also the focus of the strategy of reinvigorating China through human resource development and setting up an innovative country.However,while many scholars believe that the star is the decisive driving factor of team innovative ability,some scholars argued that team creativity is the collective effort of all team members,and emphasized the joint efforts of all the members in developing team creative solutions.Therefore,team radical creativity depends not only on the personal intelligence of the creative stars,also,the nonstars will play an important role in the team creative process.In particular,exploratory learning of nonstars determines the diversity of novel knowledge of the team,and the potential to put forward more radical creative ideas.At the same time,social model of team creativity emphasizes that creativity comes from communication and interaction.In the process of interpersonal interaction and communication,team members carry out creative knowledge recombination by sharing,exchange,absorption and collision of knowledge,so as to generate radical creativity for the team.Because of the special roles of creative stars in team creative process,in the interaction with nonstars,creative stars not only enhance the influence of their own ideas on the team,but also make nonstars dependent on creative stars.The impacts of creative stars on teams and other employees depend on their roles in creative social interaction.Therefore,the position of creative stars in social interaction,i.e.,social network position(centrality and structural holes)has a great impact on team radical creativity,and on nonstars’ exploratory learning.In addition,the influence of creative stars on team depends not only on the structure of team members’ interaction,but also on interaction quality.Team coordination helps team members coordinate their behaviors to accomplish interdependent tasks,which will have different effects on the role of creative stars in social interaction.However,the existing research has not systematically discussed how network positions of creative stars,exploratory learning of nonstars,and team coordination,jointly influence team radical creativity.This omission not only makes us unable to fully understand the impact of team composition on team radical creativity,but also unable to understand the specific roles of the creative stars in team creative process,and thus,unable to help organizations effectively take fully advantage of the creative stars to improve innovative performance.In order to fill this gap,based on the social model of creativity,integrated with star literatures and social network theory,this study explores how centrality and structural holes of creative stars affects team radical creativity,It develops a theoretical model of the relationship between creative stars’ centrality and structural holes,nonstars’ exploration,team coordination and team radical creativity,trying to make a deeper understanding of the different roles of creative stars and nonstars in team radical creativity.In particular,first of all,based on the social model of creativity,this study emphasizes that the impact of creative stars on team radical creativity depends on the network positions of the creative stars,i.e.,centrality and structural holes.At the same time,the creative star’s centrality and structural holes have dual effects on team radical creativity.On the one hand,based on star literatures,this study posits that creative stars will provide more novel and creative ideas to the team in communicating with others,which makes a direct positive effect on team radical creativity.This positive effect is most salient when creative stars occupy centrality or structural holes.On the other hand,the creative stars who occupy centrality or structural holes may limit the ability of the nonstar employees to obtain resources,strengthen the dependence of the nonstar employees on the creative stars,and as a consequence,inhibit the nonstars’ ability to explore and learn.And thus,centrality and structural holes of creative stars will have a negative and indirect effect on team radical creativity.Moreover,this study suggests that team coordination will affect the interaction between star and nonstar employees,and then stars will have different effects on team radical creativity.Therefore,team coordination plays an important moderating role on the dual effect of creative stars’ centrality and structural holes.Based on two independent multi-sourced and multi-waved samples from R&D teams and marketing teams,this study conducts empirical analysis to test the theoretical model.Results show that creative stars,who occupy centrality or structural holes,have a direct and positive impact on team radical creativity.At the same time,however,the existence of the creative stars occupying centrality or structural holes may inhabit exploratory learning of the nonstars,and as a consequence,has indirect and negative effects on team radical creativity.Therefore,centrality and structural holes of creative stars have dual effects on team radical creativity.In the end,team coordination not only resolves the tension between the creative stars who occupy centrality or structural holes and the nonstars,weakens the indirect negative effect of the creative stars occupying centrality or structural holes on team radical creativity,but also reduces their direct positive effects on team radical creativity.Therefore,team coordination weakens both the positive direct effects and negative indirect effects of the creative stars who occupy centrality or structural holes on team radical creativity.Compared with the existing research,the innovation of this study mainly includes the following aspects:First,this study provides a micro perspective of creativity and contributes to team creativity literature.This study examines the relationship between individual and team creativity by investigating the interplay between different parts(star and nonstars)of the team and the means by which they collectively drive team radical creativity.Multilevel theory(Klein & Kozlowski,2000)suggested that teams are more than the sum of their individual members,with different employees often having unique and disproportional influences on the team.The social model of creativity further emphasizes the importance of communication and interaction in the creative process.In turn,this research employs a micro perspective to examine the effects of stars and nonstars on team radical creativity and explore the processes in which team creative stars interact with their teammates to develop team radical creativity.Therefore,by adopting a micro perspective(Humphrey & Aime,2014)to understand the process in which specific individuals contribute to team radical creativity,this study enriches the micro perspective of creativity,and especially,contributes to team radical creativity literature.Second,drawing on the social model of creativity,this study extends and challenges an implicit assumption that team creativity is a product of individual creativity,and is heavily influenced by the most creative member in the team.This study,however,suggests that the influence of team creative stars on team radical creativity depends on the social network position when they interact with their other teammates.Due to their special status in the team,in social interaction,creative stars can push their own ideas,and nonstars tend to seek out critical information,resources,and ideas from star employees.Extending this view,this study suggests that the influence of creative stars depends on their team social network positions.The creative star who occupies key positions(i.e.,centrality and structural holes)produce the parallel dual effects on team creativity.Although a creative star in a central position or spanning structural holes in the team network may directly contribute to team radical creativity,he or she can also inhibit others from exploring learning independently,thereby adversely affecting team radical creativity—a notion challenging previous research’s contention that stars invariably enhance team performance.Finally,given the importance of team coordination in synchronizing team members’ collective efforts,this study posits that team coordination serves as an important boundary condition that can influence the positive effects of the team’s creative stars who occupy centrality or structural holes on team radical creativity and mitigate their detrimental effects on nonstars’ learning behavior.The inclusion of team coordination suggests that our understanding of network positions of team stars and team-level creativity can be enhanced by considering the quality and efficiency of interactions in the team.In doing so,we become able to identify when teams can benefit from their star members in driving radical creativity and hence provide a nuanced view of the creative star’s influence within the team.This study explores the interactive effects of centrality and structural holes of creative stars,the exploration of nonstars,and team coordination on team radical creativity,which helps us have a deeper understanding of how different types of employees in the interactive process,jointly influence team radical creativity from a micro perspective,as well as a deeper understanding of how the star employees play a role in the team.This study not only promotes the research of team creativity and the research of star performers,but also provides important guidance to management practice.Organizations should not only pay attention to the development of the stars,but also pay attention to the role of the nonstar employees.Encouraging nonstar to participate in independent exploration will help organizations gain more diversified ideas and have a more positive effect on organizational innovation.At the same time,organizations should not only pay attention to the advantages of the stars,but also pay attention to the possible negative impacts of the stars.It is not the best choice to promote stars while ignoring the negative influence of stars on nonstars.Therefore,organizations should make a balance between the star and the nonstar.Finally,the organizations should improve team coordination.A high level of team coordination not only reduces the reliance on creative stars who occupy key positions in social interaction,but also mitigate the negative effects on nonstars’ explorative learning.