The Impact of High-Quality Interpersonal Relationships on Team Creativity

Abstract: Growing attention has been focused on the antecedents of creativity, but enhancing creativity from an interpersonal perspective has been overlooked. Based on social information processing theory, this study aims to investigate the impact of high-quality interpersonal relationships (HQIRs) on team creativity via team learning and explore the boundary condition of clarity of organizational goals. Time-lagged data collected from 306 employees in 66 work teams showed that capacities and subjective experience of HQIRs had positive effects on team creativity and indirect effects on team creativity through team learning. Clarity of organizational goals significantly strengthened the effects of capacities and subjective experiences of HQIRs on team learning. Thus, this study enriches existing literature on team creativity from the interpersonal relationship perspective and provides managers with practical insights on how to properly use the potential positive effects of HQIRs.