A Multilevel Analysis of the Relationship between Shared Leadership and Creativity in Inter‐Organizational Teams

Abstract

An inter‐organizational team, which consists of diverse members from different organizations to conduct an initiative, has been widely treated as a critical method to improve organizational innovation. This study proposes a multilevel model to test the relationship between shared leadership and creativity at both team‐ and individual level in the context of inter‐organizational teams. Multisource data were collected from 53 inter‐organizational teams. We obtain the following findings: first, shared leadership is positively related to both team creativity and individual creativity via knowledge sharing. Second, task interdependence positively moderates the relationship between shared leadership and knowledge sharing. Third, task interdependence positively moderates the relationship between knowledge sharing and team creativity, but does not moderate the relationship between knowledge sharing and individual creativity. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.

The effects of high‐involvement work systems and shared leadership on team creativity: A multilevel investigation

“…Shared leadership is conductive to knowledge sharing among team members, which will extend the team knowledge pool and provide cognitive resources for team creativity (Gong et al, ; Gu et al, ). In addition, scholars have found that shared leadership can promote team learning, which encourages team members to continuously learn new information, knowledge, and skills from each other to accomplish their own tasks (Liu, Hu, Li, Wang, & Lin, ).…”

“…Shared leadership is conductive to knowledge sharing among team members, which will extend the team knowledge pool and provide cognitive resources for team creativity (Gong et al, 2013;Gu et al, 2018).…”

“…This study contributes to current literature in the following ways. Gu, Chen, Huang, Liu, & Huang, 2018;Wu & Chen, 2018;Wu & Cormican, 2016). However, most research focuses on the outcomes of shared leadership (Zhu, Liao, Yam, & Johnson, 2018).…”

Evaluation of Enterprise Learning Performance in the Process of Cooperation Innovation Using Heronian Mean Operator

“…According to the content and evolution characteristics of interorganizational learning, the evolution content of interorganizational learning is the process of clarification, sharing, and internalization of relevant knowledge into another organization based on the perspective of system view. From different perspectives, scholars put forward many factors that affect the effectiveness of inter-organizational learning [40][41][42][43][44]. Zhu et al [40] proposed that there are four main factors affecting the effectiveness of interorganizational learning, namely, culture, structure, technology, and absorptive capacity.…”

“…Yayavaram et al [42] thought that the key elements of organizational learning are interaction between partners, high learning goals, trust, and long-term goal orientation. The degrees of trust between organizations, learning intention, partner's knowledge attribute, and organizational learning ability have great influence on knowledge transfer and interorganizational learning [43]. In order to realize the learning opportunities provided by the alliance, collaborators must attach importance to learning and consciously think about how to learn.…”