Examining the effects of creativity, collaboration, creative diversity and autonomy on team creative performance

The present study investigated the multidimensional relationships among some of the factors which affect the creative performance of teams, including creativity, collaboration, diversity, and autonomy in educational settings. Two hundred and thirty one (231) university students of Informatics worked in teams for a whole semester, and their projects were evaluated for creativity with the Consensual Assessment Technique. Structural equation modelling and path analysis with bootstrapping were used to analyze the collected data and examine relationships. According to the results, the creative diversity of teams had a significant positive relationship with their creative performance, whereas the aggregated individual creativity of members did not have a significant effect. Collaboration among team members had a positive impact on the teams’ creative outputs and also partially mediated the relationship between creative diversity and creative performance. Autonomy of members correlated significantly with their creativity, however, at the team level, there was not a significant relationship between autonomy and creative performance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed and future research directions are proposed.