Cultivating Innovation with Heart and Mind: Linking Team Compassion with Team Innovation through Team Integrative Complexity in the Developmental Phases of Team Innovation

Abstract

Teams engage in emotional experiences and regulate their cognitive processes at different developmental phases to foster team innovation. This research theorises and examines the role of team compassion, a unitary discrete emotion that arises from team members' shared experiences of witnessing others' needs or suffering, accompanied by a desire to help, in facilitating team innovation. Drawing on the teams-as-information-processors perspective, I argue that team compassion enhances team innovation by promoting team integrative complexity, wherein teams differentiate and integrate multiple dimensions and issues related to their tasks. Incorporating temporal views on teamwork, I posit that, compared to team integrative complexity in the early phase (when teams develop ideas) and midpoint transition (when teams redirect task strategies), team integrative complexity in the later phase (when teams implement ideas) is more likely to predict team innovation. In Study 1, using a sample of 87 organisational teams and a cross-lagged panel model in a longitudinal design, I found that team integrative complexity at Time 3 (i.e., later phase) mediated the effect of team compassion at Time 2 (i.e., midpoint transition) on team innovation at the end of innovative tasks (Time 4). Whereas team integrative complexity at Time 1 (i.e., early phase) and Time 2 were not significantly related to team innovation, the effect of team integrative complexity at Time 3 on team innovation was significant and positive. In Study 2, using a sample of 65 ad hoc teams and an experimental design, I manipulated team compassion and observed team integrative complexity at three phases of a team's life. I found that teams in the team compassion condition produced higher levels of team integrative complexity than those in the control condition. In turn, team integrative complexity enhanced team innovation. Team integrative complexity in the later phase was more likely to correspond to achieving team innovation than it was during the early phase and midpoint transition. Implications for theories, practice, and future research are discussed.