Membership change, idea generation, and group creativity: A motivated information processing perspective

Suqing Wu*, Bernard A. Nijstad, Yingjie Yuan

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)
148 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Membership change has been found to stimulate collective idea generation but to not always benefit group creativity-the generation of final outcomes that are novel and useful. Based on motivated information processing theory, we propose that membership change challenges group members to generate more ideas, but that this only contributes to group creativity when members have high levels of prosocial motivation and are willing to process and integrate each other's ideas. In a laboratory study of 56 student groups, we found that incremental, but not radical, idea generation mediated the positive effect of membership change on group creativity, and only when group members were prosocially motivated. The present study points to different roles of incremental versus radical ideas and underscores the importance of accounting for prosocial motivation in groups for reaping the benefits of membership change in relation to group creativity.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1412-1434
Number of pages23
JournalGroup Processes & Intergroup Relations
Volume25
Issue number5
Early online date21-Apr-2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Aug-2022

Keywords

  • group creativity
  • incremental idea generation
  • membership change
  • prosocial motivation
  • radical idea generation
  • DEEP-LEVEL DIVERSITY
  • OUTCOME INTERDEPENDENCE
  • SOCIAL IDENTITY
  • WORK TEAMS
  • TASK
  • PERFORMANCE
  • INTEGRATION
  • INNOVATION
  • IMPACT
  • FRAMEWORK

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