Information Sharing and Creativity in a Virtual Team: Roles of Authentic Leadership, Sharing Team Climate and Psychological Empowerment

Abstract

Creativity is crucial in an ever-changing e-business environment. The creation of new value is essential for companies to gain the competitive edge and to pioneer new markets in e-business. Hence, many companies in e-business operate virtual teams as they are suitable to generate creativity. Even so, virtual teams possess the inherent weakness of a lack of cohesiveness. Hence, for a virtual team to be creative, team members should help each other and share information. This study emphasizes the importance of information sharing that is supposed to improve creativity and explains how to increase them for virtual teams. To explain these relationships, three dimensions are routinely examined in organizational behavior studies: leaders, teams, and members. As a consequence, and through empirical analysis, authentic leadership, sharing team climate, and psychological empowerment enhances information sharing and creativity through their respective roles, in addition to information sharing directly increasing creativity. To improve creativity and information sharing of virtual team members in e-business, this article has highlighted the importance of the three roles stated prior. Such factors can increase information sharing and creativity, and will help virtual teams and organizations to be more successful in e-business.