When Extant Brokers Come Together: Understanding Project Team Creativity from a Social Network Perspective

Many organizations use project teams to meet the growing necessity for flexibility and innovation, however, previous studies have focused on human capital as a primary factor for designing project teams. This study aims to provide a new standpoint for composing and operating project teams, drawing on social capital theory. Considering that project teams are supposed to generate novel solutions or useful alternatives and brokerage positions within an interpersonal network are beneficial for enhancing creativity, we focus on project teams which are composed of members experienced with structural holes. Specifically, we examine which structural features project teams with extant brokers display and how the relational patterns of the project teams influence their outcomes such as creative performance. The results from 44 project teams with 211 undergraduates showed that when individuals who had spanned structural holes in their original social settings came together in new project teams, the project teams tended to form more diverse ties beyond the focal teams and have less dense ties within the teams compared to the other project teams. We also found that external tie diversity mediated the positive link between project teams with extant brokers and their creativity, and density within project teams strengthened the positive effects of diverse external ties on the creativity of project teams. We expect that the findings of this study contribute toward extending the literature on project teams and social networks.