Research On The Relation Of Work Unit Cognitive Variety And Individual Creativity

Team demographic diversity is an important issue of the organization and management research and previous research proposes the paradox of cognitive benefits and integration in demographic diversified teams. Some researchers insist that team demographic diversity could bring cognitive benefits due to large knowledge pool based on information processing perspective of social cognition theory. While others suggest that diversity leads to conflicts and lower the team integration based on social categorization theory. To solve the problem, researchers try to integrate the two perspectives and propose comprehensive model such as categorization-elaboration model, the most influential one. Categorization-elaboration model believes that both social categorization and information processing should be taken into consideration when observing the working mechnism of team demographic diversity. They have interactive effect on each other and one of them may moderate the influence of the other on dependent variable.Based on categorization-elaboration model, this paper aims to inquire individual’s being different through its social network to unpack the integrative model. Team members’difference from other members is introduced in this paper to elaborate the working mechanism of social categorization in the team process. Meanwhile, the negative effects brought by the differences between individuals with other members of the team can be overcome by the similarity between a member’s social network and the team he/she belongs to.In a two-wave study of865employees nested in226work teams in55organizations in China, our empirical findings indicate that between the cross-level relation of work unit cognitive variety and individual creativity, being different between individuals and its work unit members has a moderating effect, and also being different between individuals’social network and its work unit members has a moderating effect. The results show that, by initially building social network with similar demographic characteristics to their working team, team members can conquer the communication barriers and benefit from the team’s knowledge diversity, and then improve their own creativity.This research introduces the concepts of demographic characteristics and social network to explain what kind of members are able to take full advantage of the cognitive diversity of the team and enhance their own creativity. Furthermore, this paper elaborates how the members can benefit from the team cognitive diversity through building their own social network. Besides, by exploring the mechanism of team demographic diversity and members’creativity, this paper clarifies the relationship between the two concepts. The contradiction between social categorization perspective and information processing perspective in the research field of team diversity is well reconciled and further development.