Abstract:

As teams have gradually become the fundamental units of work in organizations, the promotion of team creativity has emerged as a crucial resource for enterprises to establish competitive advantages and achieve sustainable development. However, current studies on the factors influencing team creativity have not given sufficient attention to the team’s psychological factors. They have also overlooked the cross-level influence path from the team to the individual and then back to the team. Moreover, it is challenging for empirical research to effectively test causal relationship. To address these issues, our research introduces the psychological construct of ‘team work passion’ and conducts three studies.

First, Study 1 uses the grounded theory to explore the components of team work passion from the affect, cognition, and motivation aspects. This original items of this measurement base on the studies about team passion in entrepreneurship and innovation fields. And then, it employs the first-hand data to examine the structure of team work passion in Chinese organizations, developing an effective measurement. This study also references the dual work passion model to divide team work passion as team harmonious passion and team obsessive passion. To sum up, study 1 demonstrates the unique characteristics of team work passion in Chinese work context, especially for team obsessive passion, which is driven by external compulsion rather than internal compulsion. It also integrates the dual model of individual work passion into the team level, thus expanding the implication field of this model.

Second, Study 2 identifies the impact pathway of team work passion on team creativity at both team and cross levels. To be specific, at the team level, it implies that team work passion at Time1 influences team creativity at Time 2 through team reflexivity; At the cross level, team work passion at Time 1 improves individual work passion and then enhances individual creativity at Time 1. Furthermore, individual creativity can emerge as team creativity at Time 2, with the moderating effect of team reflexivity. Study 2 test the mechanism from both the team process factor (team reflexivity) and individual factor (individual’s work passion), which make up the research framework of team creativity’s antecedents. It also provides parameters for simulations in Study 3.

Third, Study 3 first establishes a supplementary empirical study to explore how team creativity at Time 2 affects team work passion at Time 3. It clarifies that team creativity at Time 2 can be the input variable for team work passion at Time 3. It also opens the black box that how team creativity at Time 2 promotes team work passion at Time 3. To be specific, team member’s basic psychological needs are satisfied when team creativity is increased. And the satisfaction of basic psychological needs are necessary resources of work passion. Therefore, team creativity facilitates team member’s work passion via basic psychological needs. Furthermore, team individual’s work passion emerges as team work passion during emotional contagion. This study then conducts a multi-level causal loop model of team work passion affecting team creativity, based on the IMOI model and computational modeling. This research breaks through the traditional one-way causal logical framework, both in terms of both its conceptual approach and methodology.

These three studies explain how team work passion promote team creativity, and how team creativity drive further team work passion in the long run. They combine the empirical study and dynamic computational modeling, thus ecologically presenting the mechanism and conditions of the transformation of team work passion and team creativity at both team and individual levels. Therefore, it significantly enhances the research framework for understanding the formation mechanism of team creativity, providing a solid theoretical foundation and practical guidance for cultivating passionate teams and enhancing team creativity.

Key words: team creativity, team harmonious passion, team obsessive passion, computational modeling, IMOI model