Exploring the Creativity Performance of Virtual Teams from the Perspectives of Leadership and Creative Personality

Abstract

虛擬圍隊已成為新的任務單位，為提升團隊成員的創造力績效，企業必須同時從團隊的領導者與成員兩觀點進行探討。本研究採縱貫性研究方式，探討不同的領導激勵語言與成員創造力人格，對成員創造力績效的影響，採2×3實驗設計，將三校四個班級的180位大學生進行隨機指派分組，經四週的網路群體決策支援系統會議後，發現在創意構想量方面，領導者的同理心語言能明顯提升創新型與適應型人格成員的構想量，方向指引語言則能明顯提升中間型人格的構想量。在構想品質方面，創新型人格平均表現較佳，若成員在任務中傳達的構想量愈多，其構想品質也愈好。因此，建議虛擬團隊領導者在帶領成員執行任務時，應考量成員的人格差異，運用不同的激勵語言來鼓勵成員多發表意見與參考他人意見，並遴選創新型人格者來執行創意任務，此將有助於提升創造力績效。

The virtual team is a new type of work unit. In order to promote the creative performance of virtual team members, enterprises should explore relevant factors from the perspectives of both leadership and team members. The present study adopted a longitudinal approach to examine the effects of leaders' motivating language and members' creative personalities on the creative performance of virtual teams. This 2×3 experimental design project included 180 students from four classes at three universities who were randomly assigned to participate. After 4 weeks of on-Line meetings on a web-based group decision support system, the following results were found: (1) the leader's empathetic language significantly improved the ideas of innovators or adaptors; (2) the leader's direction-giving language significantly improved the ideas of intermediates; and, (3) the innovators expressing more ideas showed superior quality in their creative performance. These results suggest that in order to promote members' creative performance, Leaders should consider members' creative personalities as well as choose appropriate motivating language to encourage members to express ideas. Meanwhile, leaders should select individals with higher creative personality to deliver creative tasks.