The States And Processes Of The Mechanism Research Of Feedback Valence On Team Creativity

The international competitive environment and the bottleneck of domestic technological development urgently need high-quality technological innovation.Driving enterprise technological innovation has become an important issue of national innovation strategy,enterprise long-term development and theoretical research.In the reports to both the 18^th,the19^thand 20^thNational Congress of the CPC,innovation has been emphasized many times.Creativity generated by individuals and teams is the main source of innovation（Amabile,1988）and plays a crucial role in innovation（Liu Chao et al.,2013）.The work of modern organizations,especially creative work,is usually carried out in the form of teams,and team creativity is becoming more and more important to organizations.Creative work typically evolves through five stages,feedback is a key hub in the last two stages.To some extent,creativity is also about change.At its core,feedback is about generating change.Both imply a forward-looking focus:“Here’s what can be improved in the future”.Creative workers need to find“openings”in feedback that they can explore further.Obtaining external feedback can increase one’s thoughts,and creative performance can be enhanced by obtaining different perspectives from others’perspectives and cognitive processing and combining these with one’s own（Gao Fu,2019）.Among various variables of feedback,feedback valence is one of the most basic dimensions,which refers to the positive or negative degree of difference from the applied standard（Hoever et al.,2018）,including positive feedback and negative feedback,which is a very effective management tool.Any time a teacher releases the results of a class test or a manager releases a quarterly performance report that gives students or staff an opportunity to compare their performance to others,this feedback can lead to dramatic changes in subsequent behavior,and that’s what feedback valence is for!In the context of Chinese culture,under the influence of“keeping your wits about you”,“silence is golden”and“face”,both external team members and internal team leaders and colleagues are reluctant to provide feedback,especially evaluative feedback valence.Feedback valence is an effective management tool that is underappreciated and underused.This study puts feedback valence and team creativity together to explore the mechanism and boundary of feedback valence on team creativity,and to answer the core question of“How does feedback valence enhance team creativity and how to form sustainable improvement ability in a dynamic environment”.Feedback valence is the core concept of this paper.Firstly,this paper reviews the research status of feedback valence.Based on the basic views of important theories such as the Interaction Model of Innovative Behavior and feedback intervention theory,the research design is carried out from the perspective of feedback valence within and outside the team.Three batches of data were used in this study.The first batch of data was obtained from the matching data of leaders and members of 8 enterprises,115 questionnaires were distributed to the enterprise team leaders and 397 questionnaires were distributed to their subordinates.The second batch of data was collected from 16 enterprises,using the method of multi-source and multi-time points,the data collection process was carried out in three times.The samples formally entered the data analysis included 158 team leaders and 659 employees.The third batch of data comes from an experiment involving 415 students from a domestic university,who formed 118 teams of 3 or 4,and the final data sample was 107 teams with 379 students.Three research methods were used.To explore the mediating mechanism and boundary conditions of feedback valence and team creativity from three important mediating mechanisms in state and process（motivation,emotion and behavior）.Since feedback seeking behavior can improve creativity（Whitaker&Levy,2012）,innovation behavior（Zhang Jie,2014）and innovation performance（De Stobbeleir et al.,2011）,it is of great significance to study how to improve employees’feedback seeking behavior through feedback valence intervention,which is an active behavior for the formation of sustainable improvement of creativity in a dynamic environment.The paper includes four sub-studies,the specific contents are as follows:Study1 focuses on the motivational mechanism of the impact of feedback valence on team creativity.Feedback intervention influences creativity mainly by changing the internal motivation of employees（Long Junwei,2003C）.Therefore,the first study studied the influence mechanism of team leader feedback valence on team creativity from the motivation mechanism.An empirical study was conducted on 115 team leaders and 397 team members to explore the impact of team leader feedback valence on team creativity.The mediating effect of team harmonious innovation passion and the moderating effect of proactive personality.Study 2 focuses on the affective mechanism of feedback valence on team creativity.Emotional presence is a relatively new variable,which has high research value,especially in China,which believes in wisdom and self-preservation,and relevant empirical studies are still very scarce.Therefore,on the basis of previous studies,the mediating effect of emotional presence on the relationship between feedback valence and team creativity and the moderating effect of diverse curiosity were explored.Study 3 explored the behavioral mechanism of the impact of feedback valence on team creativity.Under the mode of team work,it is inevitable to face the problem of team conflict.In recent years,the research on the impact of team conflict on innovation has been the focus of both organizational practice and theoretical research.In the Chinese context,relationship conflict is more harmful than in the West.This study experimentally investigated the mediating effect of team relationship conflict on the relationship between feedback valence and team creativity and the moderating effect of creative time pressure.Study 4 explored the interpersonal interaction mechanism of the impact of feedback valence on team creativity.To explore the cross-level influence of team leader’s feedback valence on employees’feedback seeking behavior and the mediating effect of job meaning,the moderating effect of positive attributions.The theoretical contributions of this paper are as follows:（1）this study focuses on the impact of feedback valence on team creativity from two dimensions-positive feedback and negative feedback,which is an important test and extension of Amabile’s model of creativity and innovation factors.（2）The research enriches the research on the mechanism and boundary of feedback valence on team creativity.The research focuses on the state and process mechanisms that influence team creativity,including motivation,emotion and behavior mechanisms,which are also three key elements in emergence research.（3）The research shifted focuses of implementers of feedback valence from external to both internal and external sources,and the research on the relationship between leader’s feedback valence and team creativity has been opened up.（4）The research verifies the interpersonal interaction between feedback valence and feedback seeking behavior,which lays a theoretical foundation for the formation of the active cycle mechanism of team creativity improvement and continuous innovation.（5）The research focuses on feedback intervention from formal and regular feedback to informal and irregular feedback in daily work.Informal and irregular feedback is more common in creative work and has more research value and significance.The actual contribution are as follows:（1）The research results provide a new thinking model for managers to design and improve the feedback mechanism from the valence dimension to improve team creativity.（2）The research results on the state and process mechanism of the impact of feedback valence on team creativity have positive significance for managers to understand how to improve team creativity through three important mediating mechanisms.It is helpful for managers to improve team creativity through feedback intervention on these three important mediating mechanisms and mediating variables.（3）It provides a new idea for managers to create an organizational situation which conducive to the functioning of feedback valence and a supportive atmosphere for creativity.（4）The research results will remind managers to pay attention to the role of irregular and informal feedback valence,which is conducive to the use of feedback valence as a management method in daily work as a normal work,and more conducive to the improvement of team creativity through feedback intervention.（5）The research results help managers to pay attention to the internal and external feedback valence of the team at the same time,which can both improve the team creativity.（6）The research of relations between feedback valence and feedback seeking behavior,is helpful to solve the problem that management practices rely too much on managers to use the tool of feedback valence and employees are always passive waiting for feedback,which cannot better stimulate the vitality of employees and is not conducive to the stimulation of team creativity.