Creativity in innovative projects: How teamwork matters

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ENGTEC-1226; No of Pages 19 

Creativity in innovative projects: How teamwork 

matters 

Martin Hoegl a, *, K. Praveen Parboteeah b,1 

a WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management, Burgplatz 2, 56179 Vallendar, Germany 

b University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Management Department, College of Business & Economics, 

Whitewater, WI 53190, United States 

Abstract 

This article investigates the influence of the quality of teamwork on the performance effects of domainrelevant 

skills and creative-thinking skills in innovation teams. We propose that the quality of teamwork is 

an important moderating condition facilitating the application of domain-relevant skills, while obstructing 

the application of creative-thinking skills. Using data from 575 members, leaders, and managers of 145 

software development teams, we test direct and moderated relationships between teams’ domain-relevant 

skills and creative-thinking skills with team effectiveness and efficiency. Results show that neither domainrelevant 

skills nor creative-thinking skills have direct effects on team effectiveness (i.e., quality of the 

software product) and team efficiency (i.e., adherence to schedule and budget objectives). However, the 

results show that teamwork quality has positive effects on the relationship between domain-relevant skills 

and team efficiency, while having negative effects on the relationship between creative-thinking skills and 

both team efficiency and effectiveness. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. 

# 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 

JEL classification : O31; O32; M12 

Keywords: Creativity; Teamwork; Innovation

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M. Hoegl, K.P. Parboteeah / J. Eng. Technol. Manage. xxx (2007) xxx–xxx 

products that are radically different and valuable to create competitive advantage (Van de Ven, 

1986; Hurley, 1995; Amabile, 1996; Oldham and Cummings, 1996; Madhavan and Grover, 1998; 

Lovelace et al., 2001). One way in which organizations are combining the creativity of their 

employees while ensuring operational efficiency is through teams (Cohen, 1994; Kichuk and 

Wiesner, 1997; Hoegl and Gemuenden, 2001). In such teams, individuals interact directly to 

integrate their diverse knowledge and skills (Mohrman et al., 1995; Taggar, 2002; Tesluk et al., 

1997). 

However, despite the importance of teams to innovative tasks and the increased attention 

devoted to understanding creativity (Woodman et al., 1993; Amabile, 1996; Ford, 1996; Taggar, 

2002), there is still a relative dearth of studies investigating team-level factors influencing the 

application of the creative potential in teams and its effects on performance dimensions of 

innovative projects such as product quality as well as development budget and time (Leenders 

et al., 2003). Past research shows that there has been strong interest in individual-level creativity 

(MacKinnon, 1965; Madjar et al., 2002). 

However, a number of scholars have expanded the scope of theorizing beyond the individual 

to comprise multiple levels (e.g., Amabile, 1996; Ford, 1996; Drazin et al., 1999), including 

team-level creativity (Taggar, 2002) and organization-level creativity (Woodman et al., 1993). 

Furthermore, most of the research on group creativity has primarily involved comparisons 

between groups and ‘nongroups’ (Paulus, 2000) investigated in laboratory studies. While such 

prior contributions recognize the potential influence of team processes, there is a lack of studies 

that provide conceptual explanations and empirical validation of how team processes affect the 

application of individuals’ creative potential on projects that generally require creativity (e.g., 

innovative projects such as software development). 

Focusing on the team level of analysis, we investigate how team collaborative processes 

influence the relationship of creativity-relevant skills with team performance. Following 

Amabile’s (1996) conceptualization, we distinguish between domain-relevant skills – abilities 

regarding a specific content domain, and creative-thinking skills – divergent thinking and 

association abilities. We propose that team collaboration, i.e., the interactive work mode of teams 

also referred to as teamwork (Hoegl and Gemuenden, 2001), has different effects in that high 

levels of team collaboration facilitate the application of domain-relevant skills while impeding 

the application of creative-thinking skills. 

The main thrust of our argument regarding domain-relevant skills is that teams need to have 

high levels of collaboration to synergistically combine their diverse skills on the common team 

task (Okhuysen and Eisenhardt, 2002; Thompson, 2003) in order to successfully cope with the 

complex, novel, uncertain, and dynamic nature of innovative projects (Gladstein, 1984; Stewart 

and Barrick, 2000). In contrast, we propose that collaborative processes reduce the performance 

effect of teams’ creative-thinking skills. This argument is based chiefly on the grounds that 

creativity as a process (Drazin et al., 1999) involves divergent thinking (Amabile, 1996; Paulus, 

2000; Thompson, 2003), or the generation of a wide variety of ideas or responses to a particular 

problem. The collaboration within teams, however, is likely to result in strong convergent forces, 

limiting the application of creative-thinking skills and their influence on team performance in 

innovative projects. 

Given the above-described state of the literature, this study addresses a significant gap. Past 

research has generated understanding of the processes behind how multiple levels can contribute 

to ‘creativity’. In such studies, creativity has been typically conceptualized as an outcome, such 

as the novelty or inventiveness of a problem solution achieved, often referred to as the ‘creative 

product’ (Woodman et al., 1993; Ford, 1996; Drazin et al., 1999; Taggar, 2002). However, little is 

Please cite this article in press as: Hoegl, M., Parboteeah, K.P., Creativity in innovative projects: How 

teamwork matters, J. Eng. Technol. Manage. (2007), doi:10.1016/j.jengtecman.2007.01.008

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M. Hoegl, K.P. Parboteeah / J. Eng. Technol. Manage. xxx (2007) xxx–xxx 3 

Fig. 1. Conceptual framework. 

known about how the creative potential of teams (as an ‘‘input’’ in terms of input-process-output 

models of team effectiveness; Gladstein, 1984; Hackman, 1987) affects different aspects of the 

task performance of teams with innovative projects, such as the quality of the product developed 

as well as adherence to schedule and budget objectives. As such, we investigate how two different 

types of creativity-relevant skills, namely domain-relevant skills and creative-thinking skills 

(Amabile, 1996), are linked to different dimensions of team performance in light of the team 

collaborative process (Hoegl and Gemuenden, 2001). We thus go beyond prior conceptual 

contributions or laboratory studies investigating individual creative action (Ford, 1996) or group 

creativity (Taggar, 2002). 

We detail our arguments regarding creativity-relevant skills by considering the broad 

conceptualization of team collaboration offered by Hoegl and Gemuenden (2001), who specify 

six team process variables, i.e., communication, coordination, balance of member contributions, 

mutual support, effort, and cohesion, as facets of the quality of teamwork. As such, we argue that 

teamwork quality moderates the relationships of domain-relevant skills and creative-thinking 

skills with team performance. Fig. 1 depicts the conceptual framework. This research thus 

extends previous analyses (Hoegl and Gemuenden, 2001; Hoegl et al., 2003) relating teamwork 

quality directly to team performance. Drawing on data from the same study, we investigate 

teamwork quality as a moderator variable, influencing the relationship between teams’ creativity 

relevant skills and team performance. 

2. Literature review and research hypotheses 

2.1. Creativity-relevant skills and team performance 

Amabile (1983, 1996) argues that creativity relevant skills include both domain-relevant skills 

and creative-thinking skills. Domain-relevant skills refer to abilities regarding a specific content 

domain (e.g., technical area) relevant to solve problems and complete tasks (Amabile, 1996). 

Creative-thinking skills refer to the ability to take new perspectives on problems and apply 

persistence to the exploration of new pathways to solve problems (Amabile, 1996; Taggar, 2002). 

We propose that the adequacy of a team’s domain-relevant skills is especially critical in 

innovative projects, such as the software development projects studied in this investigation, and 

directly influence two critical aspects of team performance, i.e., team effectiveness – the degree to 

which expectations regarding the quality of the outcome are met, and team efficiency – the degree 

to which the team adheres to budgets and schedule. 

Domain-relevant skills pertain to an intimate knowledge of the domain and include memory of 

factual knowledge, technical proficiency, and other performance scripts to solve problems in the 

domain (Ruscio et al., 1998; Taggar, 2002). If a team incorporates all necessary domain-relevant 



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skills for a given project, it is more likely to employ the right task strategy, to skillfully execute 

the necessary task activities at the right time, to make fewer mistakes, and therefore to come to a 

better solution within a given schedule and budget, hence contributing to higher efficiency. 

Additionally, more domain-relevant skills are more likely to provide the team with the ability to 

meet expectations regarding the quality of outcomes such as robustness and functionality of the 

new product as these skills are used to find better solutions to problems, thus achieving higher 

effectiveness. Hence, consistent with the common notion from prior conceptual contributions 

(Gladstein, 1984; Hackman, 1987; Tannenbaum et al., 1992), we posit the following: 

Hypothesis 1. Domain-relevant skills are positively related to team effectiveness. 

Hypothesis 2. Domain-relevant skills are positively related to team efficiency. 

In addition to domain-relevant skills, there is considerable evidence suggesting that 

employees’ creative-thinking skills make a significant contribution to innovation in organizations 

(Amabile, 1996). Creative-thinking skills are especially critical for innovative projects that often 

confront the team with novel problems and uncertain situations (Sicotte and Langley, 2000). In 

such projects habitual or routine processes cannot be easily developed to find solutions to 

problems (Ford, 1996). Team members that possess high levels of creative-thinking skills enable 

the team to envision new combinations of means and ends and ultimately to devise more creative 

solutions to current problems. Therefore, it seems reasonable to assume that the level of creativethinking 

skills an innovation team incorporates is positively related to team performance, 

because team members are more likely to find better answers to novel problems inherent in 

innovative projects (i.e., higher effectiveness) within the project’s time and budget constraints 

(i.e., higher efficiency). 

Hypothesis 3. Creative-thinking skills are positively related to team effectiveness. 

Hypothesis 4. Creative-thinking skills are positively related to team efficiency. 

2.2. Teamwork quality as a moderator 

In this research, we consider the process variables specified by Hoegl and Gemuenden (2001) 

as the basis for arguing the collaborative work process of teams as influencing the effective and 

efficient application of teams’ creativity-relevant skills in innovative projects. To capture the 

complex nature of team members working together, Hoegl and Gemuenden (2001) conceptualize 

and empirically validate teamwork quality as a higher order construct with six facets, i.e., 

communication, coordination, balance of member contributions, mutual support, effort, and 

cohesion. The teamwork quality construct and measures have later been validated in empirical 

studies by Easley et al. (2003) as well as Hoegl et al. (2004). 

The underlying proposition of this latent construct is that highly collaborative teams display 

behaviors related to all six teamwork quality facets. In teams with high teamwork quality, team 

members openly communicate relevant information (Katz and Allen, 1988; Hauptman and Hirji, 

1996), coordinate their activities (Adler, 1995; Faraj and Sproull, 2000), ensure that all team 

members can contribute their knowledge to their full potential (Seers, 1989), mutually support 

each other in team discussion and individual task work (Tjosvold, 1984; Cooke and Szumal, 

1994), establish and maintain work norms of high effort (Hackman, 1987; Weingart, 1992), and 

foster an adequate level of team cohesion where team members maintain the group (Mullen and 

Copper, 1994; Gully et al., 1995). 



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2.2.1. Domain-relevant skills 

We propose that teamwork quality moderates the relationship between domain-relevant skills 

and team performance. Our arguments are largely based on two peculiar circumstances of 

innovative projects and the importance of team collaboration to face such situations. First, 

relative to fairly routine projects, innovative projects involve unfamiliar situations and a lack of 

prior knowledge regarding how problems should be solved (Fischer, 1979; Gales et al., 1992). 

There is ambiguity regarding the tasks to be completed and the problems that need to be 

addressed (Sicotte and Langley, 2000). As such, although combination of domain-relevant skills 

may be adequate in a routine project, more innovative situations require that team members 

collaborate to a higher degree in order to make optimal use of their domain-relevant skills to deal 

with such a volatile and unpredictable environment (Ford, 1996; Taggar, 2002; Okhuysen and 

Eisenhardt, 2002). Second, it is very seldom that distinct individuals possess the complex set of 

skills to successfully complete complex tasks associated with innovative projects. As such, 

project success requires collaboration of multiple specialists to coherently integrate their skills 

(Sicotte and Langley, 2000) and to achieve convergence of ideas and views within the team while 

adhering to budget and schedule constraints. Below we explain how the teamwork quality facets 

facilitate the application of domain-relevant skills in innovative projects. 

At a basic level, elements of teamwork quality, such as open sharing of relevant information, 

coordination of sub-tasks, and emphasis on all team members’ contributions to the project allow 

team members to be aware of the various domain-relevant skills their teammates possess. Such 

awareness of their teammates’skills is useful, as the team will be in a better position to know whose 

expertise may be crucial facing uncertain and ambiguous issues. For instance, by openly 

communicating relevant information (Katz and Allen, 1988; Hauptman and Hirji, 1996) and 

coordinating their individual activities (Adler, 1995; Faraj and Sproull, 2000), teams can ensure that 

all members can contribute their knowledge to their full potential (Seers, 1989). As such, openly 

sharing information, emphasizing every team member’s contribution, and adequately coordinating 

tasks allow teams to be more aware of relevant project information. Thus, the teams are in better 

positions to evaluate problems from different perspectives and come to a higher quality solution 

(Watson et al., 1991; Thompson, 2003). Such intensive collaboration within the team facilitates the 

application of teams’ domain-relevant skills on the common project and hence allows for synergy. 

Moreover, teamwork quality facilitates the team performance effect of teams’ domainrelevant 

skills in that team members mutually support each other in team discussions and 

individual task work (Tjosvold, 1984; Cooke and Szumal, 1994), establish and maintain work 

norms of high effort (Hackman, 1987; Weingart, 1992), and foster an adequate level of team 

cohesion where team members maintain the group (Mullen and Copper, 1994; Gully et al., 1995). 

When faced with uncertain situations, team members are likely to seek out the interpretation of 

others (Volkema et al., 1996). If the team has developed high levels of collaboration (as evident in 

mutual support, cohesion, and work norms of high effort), a collective mind regarding the 

situation and definition of the problem can emerge (Weick and Roberts, 1993). Thus, these 

elements of teamwork quality are more likely to result in a team’s better understanding of the 

problem definition and provide guidance to interactively apply its domain-relevant skills and 

come more quickly to a superior solution (Watson et al., 1991). As such, team cohesion, mutual 

support, and work norms of high effort are likely to provide for a more coherent front as teams 

face uncertain and ambiguous situations. Thus, we hypothesize: 

Hypothesis 5. The relationships between domain-relevant skills and team performance is 

moderated by teamwork quality in that increases in teamwork quality increase: (5a) the 



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relationship between domain-relevant skills and team effectiveness; (5b) the relationship 

between domain-relevant skills and team efficiency. 

2.2.2. Creative-thinking skills 

The creative-thinking process is characterized by the conception of divergent ideas or the 

association of new combinations of means and ends (Amabile, 1996; Drazin et al., 1999; Paulus, 

2000; Thompson, 2003). In contrast, collaborative processes are inherently associated with 

convergence of ideas, the integration of knowledge, and the seeking of consensus across different, 

or divergent, viewpoints (see the arguments regarding domain-relevant skills above). Thus, while 

we believe that innovative projects require creative-thinking skills (hence our linear main effect 

hypotheses), we recognize that the collaborative team process is likely to hamper this relationship. 

Elements of teamwork quality such as communication, coordination, and balance of member 

contributions pertain to the degree to which technical and coordinative information is being 

contributed and shared within the team. However, while these task-related interaction processes 

facilitate the convergence of viewpoints on the project and its objectives, they also constrain the 

divergent thinking, the thinking ‘outside the box’, and the association of new combinations of 

means and ends. In other words, within-team collaboration is good for the selection of one 

preferred option among alternatives, but likely inhibits the creation of new alternatives (i.e., other 

possible solutions not yet considered) (Thompson, 2003). 

As such, these elements of collaboration are likely to lessen the performance impact of 

creative-thinking skills. For instance, if a team has high levels of coordination, it implies that all 

team members agree on their own individual contributions and respect certain individual subgoals 

(Hoegl and Gemuenden, 2001). However, imposing a somewhat structured environment 

through coordination on an otherwise unstructured process is likely to inhibit the proper 

application of creative-thinking skills. Because high coordination implies that team members are 

pressured to satisfy certain project requirements and deadlines, it may block any spontaneous or 

unstructured activity that is so crucial to creativity (Diehl and Stroebe, 1991). Similarly, open 

sharing of information and ideas as well as ensuring a balance of member contributions also 

means that team members are forced to acknowledge and process contributions from other team 

members. This requires time and effort that is spent in interactions within the team, thus taking 

away from the time and energy for creative work. 

Where a tight social knitting, provided through team cohesion, a work atmosphere of mutual 

support, and the presence of work norms of high effort, supports the convergence of ideas, it 

likely inhibits the emergence of divergent thinking and the creation of new ideas different from 

what is ‘on the table’ already (Thompson, 2003). As such, we propose that the relationship 

between teams’ creative-thinking skills and team performance will be reduced by a collective 

mind regarding the situation and the definition of the problem (Weick and Roberts, 1993). 

High mutual support suggests that team members respect each other’s ideas and provide a 

cooperative rather than a competitive environment. However, such an environment may inhibit the 

proper application of creative-thinking skills. Teams may be more likely to accept sub-optimal ideas 

and avoid conflict. Moreover, high team cohesion implies that team members value team membership, 

are committed to their project, and aim at maintaining the team as a social entity (Mullen and 

Copper, 1994; Gully et al., 1995). In highly cohesive teams, though, team members are likely to 

strive for consensus and approval rather than diverge from ideas that are perceived as commonly 

accepted in the team. Such processes may encourage the tendency of teams to focus on common 

information or knowledge (Stewart and Stasser, 1995) and hence may ignore other more fruitful and 

divergent avenues that may be more likely to generate novel ideas and solutions to problems. 



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Research by Schulz-Hardt et al. (2000) also suggests that high levels of collaboration may 

inhibit the application of creative-thinking skills. For instance, groups have shown to emphasize 

dominant tendencies among themselves (Tinsdale, 1983). Through high levels of collaboration, 

team members are more likely to use information shared and preferred by the group and ignore 

conflicting information. As such, critical and conflicting information from members that may 

produce superior alternatives tends to be ignored, thus limiting the use of creative-thinking skills. 

Such tendencies are similar to what has been described as groupthink, i.e., strong consensus 

seeking in teams (Janis, 1982, 1995; Esser, 1998; Turner and Pratkanis, 1998) Formally, we 

propose the following: 

Hypothesis 6. The relationships between creative-thinking skills and team performance is 

moderated by teamwork quality in that increases in teamwork quality decrease: (6a) the 

relationship between creative-thinking skills and team effectiveness; (6b) the relationship 

between creative-thinking skills and team efficiency. 

3. Methods 

3.1. Sample and data collection 

A total of 145 software development teams from four German software development 

laboratories participated in this research. All four laboratories were part of larger organizations, 

with two of them being independent operations of the same US parent company. The other two 

laboratories belonged to organizations headquartered in Germany. Each laboratory employed 

between 100 and 500 software developers. 

The laboratories provided lists of projects including names and contact information of team 

members while the employees of the software laboratories were informed that a study about team 

management was to be conducted. All team leaders and team-external managers as well as 

randomly chosen team members were contacted for individual data collection appointments. 

Respondents’ participation in this study was strictly voluntary. All contacted respondents 

participated in the study. Data were gathered through individual data collection sessions using a 

fully standardized questionnaire (five-point answer scale). All data collection sessions were 

conducted on site in dedicated rooms assuring similar conditions for every respondent. 

The individual data collection sessions followed a very structured pattern. First, team 

membership as stated on the list was confirmed with the respondent to ensure that he or she 

was indeed a member of the team in question and to ascertain that all respondents of one 

team were referring to the same set of individuals as the team. Then the respondent was 

instructed to read and complete the questionnaire on his/her own. This way, possible 

interviewer effects were minimized, while there was still a researcher present to clarify 

questions if any occurred. Each data collection session lasted about 45 min. A total of 575 

data collection sessions with members, leaders, and (team external) managers referring to 

145 software development teams were conducted. On average, data from three members of 

each team were collected. 

3.2. Multiple informants 


In order to ensure content validity and to avoid a possible common source bias, data from 

different respondents were used to measure the different variables. Team performance was 



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measured using data from (team-external) managers. Teamwork quality was measured using 

aggregated responses from multiple team members (excluding team leaders). Domain-relevant 

skills and creative-thinking skills were measured using responses from the team leaders. 

Furthermore, using the multiple item estimator for within-group inter-rater agreement as 

proposed by James et al. (1984), we found generally strong agreement across all teams between 

team leader and team member evaluations of the skills variables (domain-relevant skills: .86; 

creative-thinking skills: .85). This offers support for using the team leaders as reliable key 

informants for these variables. All further analyses are conducted on the team leader responses 

for domain-relevant skills and creative-thinking skills, thus using different sources for the 

creativity-relevant skills variables (team leader ratings), teamwork quality (team member 

ratings), and team performance (manager ratings). 

3.3. Measures 

All constructs considered in this investigation refer to the team as the unit of analysis. 

Accordingly, all measures were specified at the team level. The questionnaire was administered 

in German language. The German language measurement scales were generated for the present 

study based on descriptions and measures of related constructs in the literature (Amabile, 1996; 

Taggar, 2002). In developing these scales, we followed Churchill’s (1979) and Bagozzi’s (1994) 

suggestions for developing measures. All items for our measures were generated based on a 

thorough literature review. 

3.3.1. Domain-relevant skills and creative-thinking skills 

The teams’ domain-relevant skills and creative-thinking skills were measured using three 

items each. The items measuring domain-relevant skills reflect the specific task area of 

software development (e.g., programming, systems environment, application field of the 

software). This is consistent with Amabile’s (1996) conceptualization of domain-relevant 

skills as being those technical content skills and knowledge relevant for solving problems 

and completing projects in a specific task domain. It is worth noting that these items may 

more appropriately be thought of as an index of domain-relevant (i.e., content or technical) 

skills rather than a multi-item measurement scale. It is not necessarily the case that a team 

strong on programming skills is also strong on skills regarding the application field of the 

software. Hence, the Cronbach’s alpha for this measure of .64 should be interpreted in this 

light. 

The items assessing creative-thinking skills refer to the general inventiveness and originality 

of all team members. These items are also consistent with previous conceptualizations of 

creative-thinking skills (Amabile, 1996; Taggar, 2002). Translations of the original German 

language scales used for measuring domain-relevant skills and creative-thinking skills are 

provided in the Appendix. 

3.3.2. Team performance: effectiveness and efficiency 

Team performance can be defined as the extent to which a team is able to meet established 

quality, cost, and time objectives. For the present study, we measured team performance as 

described by its variables effectiveness and efficiency (Madhavan and Grover, 1998). 

Effectiveness refers to the degree to which expectations regarding the quality of the outcome 

(e.g., functionality, robustness, performance, etc. of the new software) are met by the team. 

Efficiency relates to the adherence to schedules and budgets. 



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3.3.3. Teamwork quality 

The teamwork quality construct was measured using between three and ten items per teamwork 

quality facet with a total of 38 items for all six facets (Hoegl and Gemuenden, 2001). The detailed 

analyses by Hoegl andGemuenden(2001)on the basis of this data demonstrate that all six teamwork 

quality facets pertain to the same latent construct (i.e., are strongly loading on one factor). Their 

analyses further document strong inter-rater agreement among team members’ assessments of 

teamwork quality in the same team (James et al., 1984). The measurement scales for teamwork 

quality and team performance are documented in full by Hoegl and Gemuenden (2001), however, 

representative items for these scales along with scale reliabilities are provided in the Appendix. 

3.4. Control variables 

We included team size (i.e., number of members) as well as the organizational tenure of team 

members (in years) as control variables in our analysis. Team size was reported to us by the 

laboratories and confirmed by the team leaders. The organizational tenure of team members was 

reported to us by the team leaders. The size of a project team is an important structural variable 

with potential influences on the quality of a team’s collaborative task process and project success 

(Gladstein, 1984; Hackman, 1987; Campion et al., 1993). Large team sizes make it more difficult 

for team members to interact with all other team members given the dramatic increase of 

(possible) individual links between team members as team size grows (Steiner, 1966). 

Furthermore, larger team sizes may increase the possibility of teams including all necessary 

domain-relevant and creative-thinking skills. A similar reasoning is plausible for organizational 

tenure, as this may relate to teams’ domain-relevant skills and their experience with innovative 

team projects. Therefore, we controlled for the possible influences of team size as well as the 

average organizational tenure of team members in all our analyses. Table 1 provides descriptive 

statistics and correlations for all continuous variables. 

In addition, we included a dummy variable to differentiate between new software projects and 

upgrade projects. This categorization was based on the team leaders’ assessments of whether 

their projects involved primarily the design and development of new software solutions (more 

innovative), or primarily the upgrade or customization of existing software solutions (less 

innovative). We suspected that project type might matter because the particularly innovative new 

software projects might have been staffed with what were considered more creative individuals. 

By including project type in our analysis, we controlled for any effects that differences in 

perceptions of project type might have had on the relationships tested. 

Given that this study includes data from four different software development laboratories, we 

controlled for possible organizational effects (i.e., dependencies between observations from one 

laboratory) in our analysis by using dummy variables for the laboratories. This procedure 

effectively controls for all constant and unmeasured differences across the laboratories that may 

explain differences in the variables and relationships investigated. 

3.5. Analytic techniques 


We used multiple regression analysis to test the hypotheses following procedures suggested by 

Cohen and Cohen (1983) as well as Aiken and West (1991). The significance of the proposed 

interaction effects was assessed after all control variables and main effects had been entered, 

using the significance level (P-value) of the interaction terms as the key indicator for moderation 

(Table 1). 



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Table 1 

Number of items, means, standard deviations, reliabilities, and correlations 

Informant Indicators Mean S.D. Alpha a (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) 

(1) Domain-relevant skills Team leader 3 4.10 .65 .64 

(2) Creative-thinking skills Team leader 3 4.05 .68 .86 .14 

(3) Teamwork quality Team members 6 b 4.04 .45 .92 .17 .18 

(4) Effectiveness Manager 10 4.11 .62 .87 .10 .12 .21 

(5) Efficiency Manager 5 3.96 .85 .85 .02 .02 .19 .61 

(6) Team size Team leader – 6.3 3 – .13 .04 .19 .06 .10 

(7) Average organizational 

tenure of team members 

Team leader – 9.7 3.66 – .03 .05 .02 .09 .00 .01 

N = 145 teams. 

a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. 

b Measured using multiple items per indicator. 

4. Results 

Hypotheses 1 through 4 propose positive relationships of domain-relevant skills and creativethinking 

skills with team performance (effectiveness, efficiency). The regression results show that 

neither domain-relevant skills nor creative-thinking skills are positively related to either efficiency 

or effectiveness. Hence, these regression analyses do not support hypotheses 1 through 4. 

Table 2 reports the results of the regression analyses for the two dependent variables 

(effectiveness and efficiency) and the interaction terms of teamwork quality with domain-relevant 

Table 2 

Regression analyses: moderating effect of teamwork quality 

Independent variables 

Dependent variables 

Effectiveness 

standard coefficient 

Control variables Laboratory 1 .05 .03 

Laboratory 2 .03 .13 

Laboratory 3 .24 + .21 + 

Project type .02 .03 

Team size .12 .07 

Average organizational 

tenure of team members 

.03 .02 

Main effects Teamwork quality .16 + .11 

Domain-relevant skills .02 .01 

Creative-thinking skills .06 .06 

Interaction terms Domain-relevant skills teamwork quality .08 .18 * 

Creative-thinking skills teamwork quality .17 ** .25 ** 

R 2 .16 .14 

F 2.24 2.02 

P .02 .03 

N = 145 teams. 

* Significant at the .05 level. 

** Significant at the .01 level. 

+ Significant at the .10 level. 

Efficiency 

standard coefficient 



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Fig. 2. Moderation effect of teamwork quality on the relationship between domain-relevant skills and team efficiency. 

skills as well as creative-thinking skills respectively. As the results show, teamwork quality 

significantly negatively moderates the relationships of creative-thinking skills with effectiveness 

and efficiency, thus lending support to hypotheses 6a and 6b. Further, teamwork quality 

significantly positively moderates the relationship between domain-relevant skills and team 

efficiency, but not between domain-relevant skills and team effectiveness, thus supporting 

hypothesis 5b while failing to support hypothesis 5a. We also note that, consistent with previous 

research (Hoegl and Gemuenden, 2001), teamwork quality shows a direct relationship with team 

effectiveness. Furthermore, the control variables are largely unrelated to either effectiveness or 

efficiency, except for the marginally significant influence of one laboratory dummy variable. 

Fig. 3. Moderation effect of teamwork quality on the relationship between creative-thinking skills and team efficiency. 



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Examples of the moderated relationships found (both positive and negative) are depicted in 

Figs. 2 and 3. Fig. 2 shows the interaction of domain-relevant skills with high and low levels of 

teamwork quality in its relationship with team efficiency. We used values representing plus and 

minus one standard deviation from the mean to split the graphs and generate the plotted 

regression lines (Cohen and Cohen, 1983; Aiken and West, 1991). Note that the plots represent 

unstandardized slopes and therefore correspond to the five-point rating scale employed at data 

collection. There is a positive relationship between domain-relevant skills and team efficiency 

when teamwork quality is high. Alternatively, when teamwork quality is low, there is a negative 

relationship between domain-relevant skills and efficiency. 

Fig. 3 depicts the interaction of creative-thinking skills with high and low levels of teamwork 

quality in its relationship with team efficiency. The graphs document that for teams with high 

teamwork quality, the relationship between creative-thinking skills and team efficiency is 

negative, while it is positive for teams with low teamwork quality. The corresponding graphs for 

the negatively moderated relationship of creative-thinking skills and team effectiveness indicate 

a similar pattern. 

5. Discussion 

This research suggest that creative processes within the context of teams require both less 

collaborative elements, where individuals develop ideas, and more collaborative elements, where 

teams discuss and elaborate ideas (Drazin et al., 1999). Our study thus contributes to the extant 

literature that has posited both negative and positive effects of team processes on creativity in 

groups (Woodman et al., 1993; Paulus, 2000; Thompson, 2003) by specifying how the 

performance effects of two elements of the creative potential of teams (i.e., domain-relevant 

skills and creative-thinking skills) are differently affected by team collaborative processes. Taken 

together, these results have implications for research and practice regarding creativity and 

teamwork in innovative projects. 

5.1. Theoretical implications 

Contrary to our predictions, we have not found relationships of domain-relevant and 

creative-thinking skills with team performance. However, there seem to be plausible 

explanations. One explanation is that the level of domain-relevant skills and creative-thinking 

skills of the teams in this sample was generally sufficient for the task. In this case, one would 

assume that all teams possessed the necessary domain-relevant skills and creative-thinking 

skills at an adequate level, and therefore the variance in these variables has no systemic effect 

on team performance. The sample means for the two skills lend some support to this ‘saturation 

explanation’ with the mean for the domain-relevant skills at 4.10 and the mean for creativethinking 

skills at 4.05 (with 5 as the scale maximum). Perhaps at this high level, the differences 

in domain-relevant skills and creative-thinking skills just do not matter much to performance 

anymore, even though the mean values represent about 80% on the five-point scale, thus 20% 

short of the scale maximum. 

A second possibility is explained by the nature of innovative projects. As argued earlier, 

innovative projects inevitably present equivocal and uncertain situations. In contrast, routine 

projects involve more certainty and problems can be dealt with based on past experience. 

Thus, in routine projects, it is much easier to use available skills additively to ensure that the 

project stays on track because what needs to get done and how it needs to get done are much 



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clearer. However, merely possessing domain-relevant skills and creative-thinking skills in 

innovative projects may not be very helpful. In innovative projects, domain-relevant skills are 

more useful if they are integrated and coordinated to achieve synergy (Sicotte and Langley, 

2000). In contrast, strong collaboration is likely to hinder the application of creative-thinking 

skills as such team processes tend to create convergence, thus impeding the divergent 

thinking necessary to identify novel solutions to task problems facing the team (Thompson, 

2003). These different moderating effects of teamwork quality are discussed in further detail 

below. 

5.1.1. Domain-relevant skills 

As Fig. 2 illustrates, the significant results for the moderator effect of teamwork quality on the 

relationship between domain-relevant skills and efficiency imply that the team collaboration 

process is important to understanding how domain-relevant skills are translated into team 

efficiency in innovative projects. This suggests that the quality of the team collaboration process 

(as assessed through the teamwork quality construct) is instrumental in utilizing teams’ technical 

skills and directing them toward the critical performance dimensions of budget and schedule. 

This ‘collaboration explanation’, consistent with previous research (Laughlin et al., 2002; 

Watson et al., 1991; Sheremata, 2000), therefore proposes that teams at an adequate level of 

technical competence depend on the quality of their collaborative task process in order to achieve 

better performance. 

Although this research largely supports the hypothesized moderator influence of teamwork 

quality, the results from this study find no support for the moderation of teamwork quality 

regarding the relationship between domain-relevant skills and team effectiveness (i.e., quality of 

the software product). While we can only speculate on possible causes, these results may pertain 

to effects of information load and the percentage of shared and unshared information in work 

groups (Stasser and Titus, 1985, 1987). As such, it is possible that group discussions tend to focus 

on information that members already shared before and information that supports the 

predominant sentiment within the group. 

While our moderated results for high teamwork quality were as expected, we were 

nevertheless surprised to find negative relations for the supported moderation hypotheses for 

low levels of teamwork quality. As Fig. 2 shows, there is a negative relationship between 

domain-relevant skills and efficiency for low levels of teamwork quality. There are possible 

reasons that can explain this negative relationship. First, as past studies have shown, teams that 

have low levels of collaboration are likely to result in motivational losses for individual team 

members (Hackman and Morris, 1975; Diehl and Stroebe, 1987; Taggar, 2002). Because 

innovative projects necessarily involve complexity, ambiguity, and uncertainty, team members 

have to collaborate to a very large degree in order to develop solutions to novel problems and 

to ensure that the project stays on track (Sicotte and Langley, 2000). However, in projects with 

high levels of skills but low levels of collaboration, individual team members may feel that 

their creative efforts are being stifled by low collaboration and thus adjust their own 

contribution to the team downward leading to lower efficiency and effectiveness (Paulus, 

2000). 

5.1.2. Creative-thinking skills 

Consistent with our theoretical arguments and prior conceptual contributions (Paulus, 

2000; Thompson, 2003), the findings from this study suggest that team collaboration 

obstructs the application of creative-thinking skills. As Fig. 3 shows, our findings suggest that 



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the relationship between creative-thinking skills and team performance is only positive for 

low team collaboration. While these results provide support for our conceptual argument, 

they complement and challenge prior research in this area. A laboratory study (involving 

undergraduate students) by Taggar (2002) highlights the importance of ‘team creativityrelevant 

processes’ such as inspirational motivation, organization and coordination, as well as 

individual consideration as ‘cross-level’ moderating processes for facilitating individual 

creativity at the group level. While we find this to be the case for domain-relevant skills, the 

opposite seems the case for creative-thinking skills. One contribution of this research is the 

more fine-grained analysis of how different elements of teams’ creative potential (i.e., 

domain-relevant skills and creative-thinking skills) as well as the collaborative process 

interact to affect the performance of organizational teams with innovative tasks. 

In addition, our results provide support for research on biased information search as 

articulated by Schulz-Hardt et al. (2000). High levels of team collaboration may well be regarded 

as an antecedent to dominant perspectives. As such, highly collaborative teams may be less likely 

to explore conflicting or ‘unshared information’ (information originally accessible to one or two 

team members) and more likely to prefer the dominant or ‘shared information’ (information 

available to all team members prior to group discussions). Furthermore, the process of 

developing high team collaboration may also imply that team members develop certain 

preferences for alternatives at decision time. In such cases, information consistent with such 

alternatives is more likely to be considered (Stasser and Titus, 1985). Such biased information 

uses are likely to inhibit the creative potential of teams. 

5.2. Practical implications 

This research holds important practical implications, especially in light of the different 

moderator effects of teamwork quality (positive and negative). First, the study demonstrates 

the importance of teamwork as a facilitator of the efficient application of domain-relevant 

skills. It is essential that managers emphasize teamwork-related skills (e.g., social and project 

management skills) along with domain-relevant skills and creative-thinking skills when (1) 

selecting applicants to join a team-based innovative organization, when (2) assigning 

individuals to work in teams, and when (3) crafting training and development schemes. 

Throughout the interviews for this study, we could hardly sense that managers were 

considering teamwork-related skills at all when carrying out these three activities. Team 

leaders are mostly appointed on the basis of their technical and project experience, while the 

other team members are included for their specific technical expertise. Social skills, as a 

prominent ingredient for making these individual ‘experts’ work well as a team, were almost 

entirely disregarded. We do not, however, suggest that domain-relevant skills or creativethinking 

skills can be disregarded in light of the impact that teamwork quality exerts. 

However, it is important for managers to understand and accept the critical role that teamwork 

skills (Stevens and Campion, 1994; Stevens and Campion, 1999) play in a team-based 

innovative organization. 

Second, given the negative moderating influence of teamwork quality on the relationship 

between creative-thinking skills and both team effectiveness and efficiency, this research also 

emphasizes the importance of less collaborative sequences in the course of innovative team 

projects. Hence, on a practical level, this study suggests that teams must allow and provide for 

collaborative work periods that facilitate the application of domain-relevant skills and less 

collaborative (i.e., individual) work periods that facilitate the application of creative-thinking 



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skills. This pertains to an issue that many organizational teams, particularly those with 

innovative tasks, often struggle with: How much work should be done jointly in direct 

interaction among team members, and how much work should be done individually Both 

team members as well as team leaders and external managers should be aware of the different 

effects that interactive work modes have, rather than push for a maximally collaborative work 

process in the assumption that ‘collaboration is always good’. Moreover, as Thompson (2003, 

p. 99) points out, ‘‘most people strongly believe that teams are more creative than individuals, 

when in fact they aren’t’’. Therefore, teams must learn to recognize that not all creative 

performance lies within collaborative processes, but that different parts of their creative 

potential are supported by different work modes. For instance, teams can specify and reserve 

segments of their work process for individual work in order for members to separately 

generate new ideas and alternatives to problems facing the team. Those alternatives can 

subsequently be discussed, evaluated, and elaborated by the team collectively. Similarly, the 

use of facilitators to manage group interactions may be more fruitful than plainly encouraging 

high teamwork. 

5.3. Limitations and future research 

A few limitations of this study along with questions for future research should be noted. 

First, the data for this research are cross-sectional rather than longitudinal. As this study 

demonstrates associations between variables, it cannot fully establish causality. A longitudinal 

research design using multiple informants would further our knowledge toward both causality 

of relationships as well as the development of variables over time. Second, the scope of the 

empirical data gathered for this research allows generalization of the results obtained chiefly 

to the domain of teams with innovative tasks such as R&D teams, new venture teams, etc. 

Third, the present study was conducted in software development laboratories in Germany, 

raising the question of transferability of results to other cultures such as those of North 

America or Asia. While this study is not internationally comparative in nature and therefore 

cannot offer any answers to this question, the theoretical considerations presented in this 

article as well as the industry for this study (software) are not country-specific, but rather 

based on international scholarly work and empirical findings. Further research in other 

countries is encouraged to increase our understanding of the possible influences of country 

contexts on the variables and relationships investigated here. Fourth, as this study contributes 

to our understanding of how creativity-relevant skills operate at the team level of analysis, it 

does not address individual level questions such as the effect of dispersed versus centralized 

distribution of certain skills within teams. Hence, we seek to encourage researchers to further 

inquire about the effects of various team member skills at both the individual and the team 

level, considering both mediating and moderating team processes, in order to make 

recommendations to organizations regarding their investment in, and deployment of, 

competencies for collaborative and innovative work environments. Fifth, given the biased 

information research (Schulz-Hardt et al., 2000), it would be fruitful to examine the process by 

which team collaboration inhibits creativity by encouraging team members to only consider 

dominant or preferred information. Furthermore, the role of minority team members and 

diversity within teams in encouraging teamwork collaboration deserves future research 

attention. The conceptual arguments and the empirical evidence from this study provide a 

starting point for such necessary further inquiry that should build on contributions from both 

the creativity and the innovation literatures. 



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Appendix 

Measurement scales for creativity-relevant skills 

Variables 

Items 

Domain-relevant 

skills 

Creative-thinking 

skills 

The team members possessed the necessary programming knowledge and skills. 

The team members possessed the necessary knowledge and skills regarding the application 

field of this software. The team members possessed the necessary knowledge and skills 

regarding the systems environment (hardware/software). Three items, Cronbach’s alpha = .64 

The team members had the ability to develop inventive ideas. The team members had the 

ability to come up with original solutions. The team members possessed the necessary 

creativity. Three items, Cronbach’s alpha = .86 

Representative items for the teamwork quality and team performance measurement scales 

Variables 

Representative items 

Teamwork 

quality 

Team performance 

Communication: The team members communicated mostly directly and personally with each 

other. Project-relevant information was shared openly by all team members. The team members 

were happy with the usefulness of the information received from other team members. 

Ten items, Cronbach’s alpha = .94. 

Coordination: The work done on sub-tasks within the project was closely harmonized. 

There were clear and fully comprehended goals for sub-tasks within our team. Four items, 

Cronbach’s alpha = .85 

Balance of member contributions: The team recognized the specific potentials (strengths and 

weaknesses) of individual team members. The team members were contributing to the 

achievement of the team’s goals in accordance to their specific potentials. Three items; 


Mutual support: The team members helped and supported each other as best they could. 

Discussions and controversies were conducted constructively. Suggestions and contributions 

of team members were discussed and further developed. Seven items, Cronbach’s alpha = .93 

Effort: Every team member fully pushed the project. Every team member made the project 

highest priority. Four items, Cronbach’s alpha = .94 

Cohesion: It was important to the members of our team to be part of this project. All members 

were fully integrated in our team. Our team was sticking together. 10 items, 


Effectiveness: The customer was satisfied with the quality of the project result. The product 

required little rework. The product proved to be stable in operation. The product proved 

to be robust in operation. Ten items, Cronbach’s alpha = .87 

Efficiency: The project was within schedule. The project was within budget. Five items, 


Note: These are translations of the original German items used in the study. 

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