Newcomer Entry and Team Creativity: The Roles of Coworkers, Leaders, and Newcomers

This dissertation examines newcomer entry into teams and team creativity in a field setting. Unique information and perspectives brought by newcomers have been proposed to provide “fresh blood” for teams, which can benefit team creativity. However, the addition of newcomers can also disrupt the optimal team processes and reduce team effectiveness. To provide insight into the relationship between newcomer entry and team creativity, the present study bridges the socialization and team creativity literatures and theorizes that socialization efforts from coworkers, leaders, and newcomers themselves can independently and jointly influence post-entry team creativity when pre-entry creativity is controlled for. The results of a longitudinal field study show that newcomer entry did not automatically increase post-entry team creativity. However, post-entry team creativity increased, compared with pre-entry team creativity, when coworkers engaged in helping behaviors toward newcomers or newcomers were proactive. Moreover, coworker helping behaviors and newcomer proactive personality interacted with each other to affect team creativity. Specifically, the relationship between team coworker helping behavior and post-entry team creativity (with pre-entry team creativity controlled for) became weaker as newcomers were more proactive. I also found that leader and coworker helping behaviors toward newcomers jointly affected team creativity. I further explored the possible mechanisms explaining why socialization efforts from coworkers, leaders, and newcomers would influence post-entry team creativity. The present research offers important theoretical and practical implications.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Business Administration

Grantor

University of Houston

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Yu, Jia

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Atwater, Leanne E.
• Phillips, James S.
• Werner, Steve
• Zhou, Jing

• Socialization
• Team creativity
• Newcomers
• Helping behavior
• Proactive personality

Statement dc:rights

• The author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10657/5812

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uh-ir.tdl.org:10657/5812