Twelfth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Since individual creativity is often embedded in the team context, the importance of leadership in the team becomes weaker. Instead, interaction as well quality of relationship between team members may have greater impact on individual creativity. However, how team members exert influence on individual creativities has not been found out yet. Based on social exchange theory as well as job characteristics theory, the research combines with psychological empowerment to figure out intermediary process between team-member exchange (TMX) and individual creativity and combines skill variety to verify its moderating role on TMX and individual creativity. The research collected 203 employees from knowledge-based teams in various enterprises as data sample. The results showed that: (1) TMX had a significant positive impact on individual creativity; (2) TMX had a significant positive impact on psychological empowerment; (3) psychological empowerment played a partial mediating role on the positive relationship between TMX and individual creativity (4) Skill diversity played a buffering role on the positive relationship between TMX and individual creativity.