Researcher: Erna Herzfeldt: erna.herzfeldt@unibw.de

 

Purpose

Facing increasingly complex and dynamic work environments and the pressure to remain competitive, organizations increasingly assign globally distributed culturally diverse employees to project teams for creative and innovative solutions. Although research shows a positive relationship between cultural team diversity and short-term creativity tasks, the effects of cultural diversity on creativity relevant team processes are predominantly negative, thus drawing an ambiguous picture on the relationship between cultural diversity and team creativity. Therefore, we need more research on how multicultural teams can fully benefit from the positive effects of cultural diversity and avoid creativity relevant process losses. The aim of this project is to explore the role of team member’s previous foreign culture experience and cultural intelligence on both, individual and team level creativity relevant process in multicultural teams.

Background

Research on team creativity suggests that creative solutions in teams emerge through information processing mechanisms at both, the individual and team level. In global teams, however, cultural diversity might inhibit information exchange at the team level and information integration at the individual level due to cross-cultural communication differences and social categorization mechanisms. Previous research on expatriates and biculturals proposes that previous exposure to multiple cultures could enhance individual abilities that are relevant for both, individual and team-level information processing. First, foreign culture experience can have a positive effect on individual cognitive abilities such as for example cognitive flexibility and integrative complexity, that enable individuals to engage in perspective taking and integrating different ideas and perspectives from team members of different cultural backgrounds. Second, previous research also suggests that individuals with foreign culture experience and cultural intelligence could assume the role of cultural brokers in multicultural teams and thus help to overcome social categorization mechanisms and cross-cultural misunderstanding that inhibit creativity relevant processes such as participative safety and team identification.

Based on this rationale this projects aims on answering the following research questions:

How do team members’ previous foreign culture experience and cultural intelligence impact team creativity in multicultural teams?

Do team members’ previous foreign culture experience and cultural intelligence impact individual abilities of creative idea generation in multicultural teams?

Do team members’ previous foreign culture experience and cultural intelligence impact creativity relevant team processes in multicultural teams?

 

 

Selected Hypotheses: 

Study 1:

H1: Team members’ individual previous foreign culture experience will be positively related to individual creative performance in multicultural teams.

H2: The relationship between previous foreign culture experience and individual creativity in multicultural teams will be mediated by cultural intelligence.

H3: Team member’s individual previous foreign culture experience and cultural intelligence will moderate the change in individual creativity in multicultural teams over the project duration.

Study 2:

H5a/b: The number of foreign culture experienced/culturally intelligent team members will moderate the relationship between cultural diversity and team creativity.

H6a/b: The number of foreign culture experienced/culturally intelligent team members will moderate the relationship between cultural diversity and participative safety.

H7a/b: The number of foreign culture experienced/culturally intelligent team members will moderate the relationship between cultural diversity and communication frequency.

Study design:

Study 1: Single- and multilevel regression with SPSS/HML.

Measures of independent constructs: Previous Foreign Culture Experience (individual level): cultural background intl. experience (tourist, work, study, online), multicultural background, international student; Cultural Intelligence (individual level): CQ scale (Ang et al., 2007); Participative Safety (aggregated at team level) (Amy Edmondson, 1999); Communication frequency (sum at team level): Peer_evaluation communication frequency; Team identification (aggregated at team level)

Measures of dependent construct Individual Creativity and Change in Individual Creativity (individual and intra-individual level): peer evaluations other quality of ideas 3-10.

Study 2: Structure equation modeling with smart PLS

Measures of independent constructs: Cultural Diversity (team level):  Blau’s Index based on Nation or Values; Number of Foreign Culture Experienced Team Members (team level); Number of cultural intelligent team members (team level);

Measures of mediating constructs: Participative safety (aggregated at team level); Team Identification (aggregated at team level); Communication Frequency (sum at team level)

Measures of dependent construct Team Creativity: reviewer’s creativity ratings of the reports (team level); Peer evaluations other quality of ideas (aggregated at team level)