The Effects Of Heterogeneity And Perceived Organizational Support On Team Creativity

Group creativity has become a hot issue in creativity researches. Group creativity is the result of interaction between group characteristics and group interaction process. Some researches have shown that heterogeneous characteristics have great impact on group creativity. But whether this effect is positive or negative depends on other factors in the group, in particular, the group interaction process. As an important organizational environment variable, perceived organizational support is in essence a supportive management measure promoting group innovation. groups with heterogeneity may perform differently in group creativity due to different organizational support they have received. Therefore, based on the above considerations, the present study aims to investigate the interaction of influence of heterogeneity and perceived organizational support on group creativity.Experiments are employed in this study. In experiment one, 30 groups are chosen to investigate the characteristics of group creativity in heterogeneity and homogeneity groups, as well as the interaction between group characteristics and perceived organizational support. The results of experiment one found that heterogeneity is the important factor to effect group creativity and heterogeneity would promote creativity. Based on experiment one, heterogeneity has been deeply analyzed in experiment two. In heterogeneity group, group faultlines emerges in the group as a result of the combination of multiple heterogeneous characteristics would effect the group interaction process and the group creativity. The author chooses 30 groups to further investigation in the characteristics of group creativity in groups with or without group faultlines and the interaction of group faultlines and perceived organizational support.Analysis of variance is adopted in the present study to process experiment data. Major conclusions are as follows:1. The interaction between heterogeneity and organizational support in fluency and originality is significant:originality in instrumental support is the best in both specialty heterogeneity and specialty homogeneity group; fluency in instrumental support of the specialty heterogeneity group is the best, but the fluency in psychological support of the specialty homogeneity group is the best. In the heterogeneity group, fluency in substantial support is better than the homogeneity group but the originality is worse; originality in psychological and instrumental support are better than the homogeneity group but there is no difference in fluency.2. There is no interaction between heterogeneity and organizational support in the total level of creativity and flexibility and adaptability. There is a main effect of organizational support in adaptability: the adaptability in substantial support is the best and the difference in psychological and instrumental support is not being.3. The interaction between group faultlines and organizational support in the total level of creativity and originality is significant: in the group with group faultlines, the total level of creativity and originality in instrumental support are better than the group without group faultlines; the originality in psychological support is better than the group without group faultlines but there is no difference in the total level of creativity; the originality in substantial support is worse than the group without group faultlines but there is no difference in the total level of creativity.4. There is no interaction between heterogeneity and organizational support in fluency,flexibility and adaptability. There is a main effect of organizational support in fluency and adaptability: the fluency in instrumental support are the best, the scores in psychological support is the second and the scores in substantial support is the worst; adaptability in substantial support is the best and the difference in psychological and instrumental support is not being.