Reflection Toward Creativity: Team Reflexivity as a Linking Mechanism Between Team Goal Orientation and Team Creative Performance

Abstract

This study aims at testing the mediating role of team reflexivity in the relationships between team learning, performance-prove, and performance-avoid goal orientations and team creative performance and assessing the relative importance of the three types of team goal orientation in team reflexivity and creative performance. We conducted Study 1 on 68 student teams by using a two-wave time-lagged design. In Study 2, we carried out a cross-sectional field study on 108 intact work teams in diverse Korean companies. Team learning goal orientation was significantly associated with team creative performance. While team learning and performance-prove goal orientations were equally influential in predicting team reflexivity, team performance-avoid goal orientation had no relationship with team reflexivity and creative performance. Team reflexivity mediated the relationships between team learning and performance-prove goal orientations and team creative performance. By revealing that team learning and performance-prove goal orientations can contribute to team creative performance through the facilitation of team reflective process, this study provides practitioners with insight into critical antecedents and team process that are conducive to the creative performance of work teams. This is one of the first studies to explore a mediating mechanism between team goal orientation and creative performance. This study attends to the role of team reflexivity as a key team-regulatory process that underlies the relationship between team goal orientation and team performance. Furthermore, the use of multiple studies in different contexts strengthens the robustness of the study findings.