Team informational resources, information elaboration, and team innovation: Diversity mindset moderating functional diversity and boundary spanning scouting effects

Abstract

The knowledge integration perspective on team innovation holds that information elaboration – the exchange, discussion, and integration of task-relevant information and perspectives – is the core team process driving team innovation. Factors reflecting the informational resources the team can draw on through information elaboration therefore are important influences on team innovation. In this respect, team innovation research points to team functional diversity and to team boundary spanning scouting to acquire information from outside the team. Team innovation research also makes clear that informational resources (as reflected in functional diversity and boundary spanning scouting) do not guarantee team information elaboration, and that identifying moderation in this relationship is particularly valuable. Building on this state of the science, we focus on the moderating role of the team diversity mindset – members' shared understanding of the importance of information elaboration for team performance – in the relationships of team functional diversity and boundary spanning scouting with information elaboration and team innovation. A multi-wave and multi-source survey of N = 215 teams involved in knowledge work in various Chinese organizations supported our research model for team boundary spanning scouting but not for team functional diversity.