Perceived Cognitive Diversity and Creativity: A Multilevel Study of Motivational Mechanisms and Boundary Conditions

Adopting a motivational perspective on creativity, we theorized when and how perceived cognitive diversity in teams was associated with creativity by focusing on the mediating role of intrinsic motivation and the moderating role of learning orientation. We further expanded our contribution by examining these relationships at both the individual and team levels. We used a sample of 382 Chinese employee-supervisor pairs nested within 106 teams to test our hypotheses. The results revealed that, at both the individual and team levels, learning goal orientation significantly moderated the positive association between perceived cognitive diversity and intrinsic motivation such that the latter relationship became stronger as learning goal orientation increased. Furthermore, our findings confirmed that learning goal orientation enhanced the indirect positive relationship between perceived cognitive diversity and creativity through intrinsic motivation.