A social-structural analysis of employee-organization relationships and team creativity

In this study, we develop and test a structural model of the relationships between employee-organization relationships and team creativity. We argue that mutual investment relationships (an employment relationship in which the employer expressed a high level and broad set of contributions expected of employees along with extensive and long-term inducements offered to employees), relative to other forms, would relate positively to team creativity and that this relationship would be mediated by higher within-team work-related communication density. In addition, we argue that the advantages of higher density would be more effectively mobilized in environments where task complexity is higher. In a two-wave study of 233 work teams in 55 organizations, we find that the mediated effect of employee-organization relationships on team creativity through work-related communication density is stronger when task complexity is high.