TY - JOUR
T1 - Two birds, one stone: How altruism can facilitate both individual creativity and prosocial behavior in two different team contexts
AU - Lin, Shen-Yang (Sonya)
AU - Park, Guihyun
AU - Zhou, Qin
AU - Hirst, Giles
PY - 2023/3
Y1 - 2023/3
N2 - Objective: This article aims to examine how individual disposition is influenced by group structures and how this in turn enhances team members’ creative and prosocial behaviors. Building on a person-in-situation theory, we argue that altruism is a communal personality leading to the dual outcome of creativity and prosocial behavior, and altruism can best facilitate the dual outcomes of creativity and prosocial behavior when team standardization is low and when team participation is high. Method: Based on data from 346 employees in 86 teams, the results from multilevel modeling largely supported our hypotheses. Results: Altruism is associated with both individual creativity and prosocial behavior when team participation is high. Altruism is associated with individual prosocial behavior when team standardization is low. Conclusions: Our study shows that to foster creativity and prosociality, teams need not only to pay attention to team members’ altruistic dispositional tendency but also to build a participative team environment and reduce team standardization to enable such dispositional tendency to be expressed. In doing so, our study offers a new alignment of prescriptions to foster prosociality and creativity. Being altruistic is an antecedent of prosociality, but it is also a powerful driver of individual creativity in participative teams.
AB - Objective: This article aims to examine how individual disposition is influenced by group structures and how this in turn enhances team members’ creative and prosocial behaviors. Building on a person-in-situation theory, we argue that altruism is a communal personality leading to the dual outcome of creativity and prosocial behavior, and altruism can best facilitate the dual outcomes of creativity and prosocial behavior when team standardization is low and when team participation is high. Method: Based on data from 346 employees in 86 teams, the results from multilevel modeling largely supported our hypotheses. Results: Altruism is associated with both individual creativity and prosocial behavior when team participation is high. Altruism is associated with individual prosocial behavior when team standardization is low. Conclusions: Our study shows that to foster creativity and prosociality, teams need not only to pay attention to team members’ altruistic dispositional tendency but also to build a participative team environment and reduce team standardization to enable such dispositional tendency to be expressed. In doing so, our study offers a new alignment of prescriptions to foster prosociality and creativity. Being altruistic is an antecedent of prosociality, but it is also a powerful driver of individual creativity in participative teams.
KW - Altruism
KW - Creativity
KW - Prosocial behavior
KW - Team participation
KW - Team standardization
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85131752595&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1037/gdn0000188
DO - 10.1037/gdn0000188
M3 - Article
VL - 27
SP - 65
EP - 79
JO - Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice
JF - Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice
IS - 1
ER -