Rutgers U., School of Management and Labor Relations, United States
Drawing on social model of creativity and vicarious learning literature, we develop a team-level model of the influence of team small talk (i.e., superficial and non-work chats within team) on team creativity. Through a three-wave and two-source field study, our analysis of the valid data from 81 teams suggest that team small talk density has positive effect on team vicarious learning (i.e., triadic vicarious learning relationships within team, where all team members have reciprocal vicarious learning ties with each other), which then have downstream consequences of team creativity. Moreover, we also found that team members’ political skill can accentuate the relationship between team small talk density and team vicarious learning and then the proposed indirect effect. This paper advances our understanding of team-level small talk and its implication to team creativity.
