How collaboration technology use affects IT project team creativity : integrating team knowledge and creative synthesis perspectives

Abstract

Contemporary IT project teams engage in creative problem solving to address increasingly complex business problems, highlighting the need to promote IT project team creativity. Collaboration technologies are widely used in IT project teams, but little is known about what collaboration technology features can be used to improve IT project team creativity and what the underlying influencing mechanisms are. To address this important gap, the current study builds on the extended team knowledge framework to identify collaboration technology features and decodes their influencing mechanisms on IT project team creativity by drawing on the novel creative synthesis theory originating in the management literature to the IT project team context. We identify three sets of collaboration technology support features—awareness knowledge supports, long-term knowledge supports, and transitional knowledge supports—and posit that their use can improve IT project team creativity by facilitating the creative synthesis process, which includes the three subconstructs of collective attention, similarity building, and enacting ideas. The research model is supported in general by empirical data collected through a multisourced survey of over 500 team members and their leaders from 62 IT project teams. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications.