One of Us or One of My Friends: How Social Identity and Tie Strength Shape the Creative Generativity of Boundary-Spanning Ties

Abstract

One of us or one of my friends: How social identity and tie strength shape the creative generativity of boundary-spanning ties AbstractSocial ties to colleagues on other work teams can spur creative ideas and workplace innovation by exposing an individual to diverse knowledge. However, for external knowledge to be recombined into innovation, the knowledge must first be recognized as potentially valuable. Going beyond traditional structural explanations, we predict that the use of diverse knowledge to generate creative ideas and solutions will depend in part on employees' psychological attachment to the organizational groups to which they belong, i.e. their social identity, and the strength of their social ties. We test our hypotheses in an R&D division of a global high-technology firm, finding that social identity influences the creative generativity of boundary-spanning ties. Specifically, stronger team identity renders interactions with colleagues on other work teams less generative of creative ideas, while identification with an overarching, superordinate group (e.g., a division) enhances creative generativity. We also hypothesize and find that tie strength attenuates the negative effect of team identity.

The Dark Side of Team Social Cohesion in NPD Team Boundary Spanning

“…By investigating the moderating effect of team social cohesion in the relationship between team boundary spanning and new product competitive advantage, this study provides new empirical evidence about when team boundary spanning influences new product performance. Furthermore, by incorporating team social cohesion in our model, the current study supports the emerging recognition that team psychological factors are important to the effectiveness of a team’s boundary‐spanning efforts (Dokko et al, ).…”

“…Finally, the study’s results advance the emerging research on group identity and intergroup bias in team boundary spanning (e.g., Dokko et al, ; Richter, West, Van Dick, and Dawson, ) by showing that the moderating effect of team social cohesion on the relationship between team boundary spanning and new product competitive advantage is accentuated by project newness and external task interdependence. Drawing on social identity research suggesting that socially cohesive groups exhibit a strong motivation to protect the group identity in situations where such identity is threatened by outgroup members (Turner and Pratkanis, ; Turner et al, ), it is proposed that project newness and external task interdependence bring about such situations, and thus socially cohesive groups are likely to exhibit stronger intergroup bias when project newness and external task interdependence are high than when they are low.…”

“…However, for boundary‐spanning teams, having access to external information and resources may not be enough to deliver product advantage, unless team members integrate the information and resources gained through their boundary‐spanning work into the NPD project (Maurer, Bartsch, and Ebers, ). On this point, recent work on boundary spanning suggests that boundary‐spanning teams can be differentially receptive to information and resources coming from outside depending on their psychological characteristics (Dokko, Kane, and Tortoriello, ; Oh, Chung, and Labianca, ; Oh, Labianca, and Chung, ). As it is argued in detail in this paper, one psychological characteristic likely to negatively influence boundary‐spanning teams’ motivation to use external resources is team social cohesion.…”

Agency Creativity: Teams and Performance

“…The concept has been used in several different areas, for example, o in the business-to-business literature to explain acquisition and utilization in new product alliances (e.g., Ganesan, Malter, and Rindfleisch, 2005;Rindfleisch, and Moorman, 2001), o in relation to creative interaction and social-network theory (e.g., Dokko, Kane, and Tortoriello, 2014;Sosa, 2011), and o with creativity and knowledge content (e.g., Perry-Smith, 2014).…”

Knowledge Sharing in Organizations

“…The implicit tendency to consider organizations as informal social groups implies the empirically implausible assumption that informal relations in organizations are autonomous from the more formal elements that define organizations as structured social settings (Dokko et al, 2013). As McEvily et al (2014: 4) recently put it, "the surge in scholarly attention to informal social structure (…) has created a sort of amnesia about the role of formal elements in explaining the functioning, performance, and nature of organizations."…”