Under the knowledge-based economics, the roles of labors are considered important once again. The human creativity has become the main source of core competence. However, as the development of enterprises brings on a new economic type, the man-hours and work loading also increases with the development of enterprises. When people are overworked, there comes pressure, fatigue and illness. Therefore, more and more people are talking about the playfulness of jobs, which refers to the spontaneity, imagination, emotional expression, and the attitude of having fun and being involved and interested in the work, all these will change with the variation of the external environment. Meanwhile, teams also play an important role in the organization. For the action unit to solve the problems of the organization and promote innovation, teams are constituted by members with various knowledge, skill and background. Hence, the team playfulness climate is also crucial to the creativity and performance of the organization. The team playfulness climate represents the share climate of autonomy and pleasure, which is built by those team members who work together day by day, such climate can get these people to feel interested and feel supported about their jobs, and so they won¡¦t be afraid to try new challenges. This study is taken from a personal viewpoint to test the model of the relationship between personal playfulness, team playfulness climate and team creativity performance. The evidence of this research is based on the questionnaires given out to the students who took the course ¡§The Discovery and Application of Creativity¡¨ which was held by the Consulting Division in Ministry of Education. Below are the discoveries of this thesis: 1. Personal playfulness positively influences team playfulness climate. 2. Team playfulness climate positively influences team creativity performance. 3. Personal playfulness has significant difference on age, the number of brothers and sisters one has, academic background, and club experience.

The prevalence of Virtual Team (VT) configurations in organizations has come to challenge the relevance of traditional management practices based on traditional, physically collocated teams. Creativity—a topical and multidisciplinary issue—has been under-researched within the context of virtuality. Predicated on the premise that creativity may be expressed differently in the context of VTs, I draw the conceptual foundations for this research from the fields of virtuality (i.e. VTs) and creativity, and use engineering design as the empirical context, with the aim of pursuing a better understanding of creativity in relationship with virtuality in the context of Virtual Design Teams (VDTs). Design constitutes a pertinent empirical context because (a) designers have to deliver outputs requiring creativity; and (b) their work is increasingly accomplished in VDT environments. I report on the findings from three case studies involving temporary VDTs. Studies 1 and 2 comprised student engineers. Study 3 was a comparative case study focusing on a team of professional engineers, who completed one design task while physically collocated (face-to-face, F2F) and another one while geographically dispersed (virtually), with the aim of isolating factors that are unique to virtuality. With an interpretive stance guiding this research, the same analytical approach for each case study, and with the team serving as the unit of analysis, I analysed the collected data (interview data, observations, video recordings, photographic material, documents, communication extracts, design and other outputs) qualitatively with the use of visual and thematic analysis. The thesis makes the following theoretical contributions: (a) it advances understanding of creativity within the VDT lifecycle; (b) it elicits factors influencing creativity in the temporary VDT context; and (c) it explains how the unique characteristics of virtuality influence creativity within this context. The thesis’ limitations as well as implications for research and practice are also discussed.

Companies are becoming increasingly dependent on teams to drive creativity and innovation, which usually involves multiple teams working together to solve complex problems However, the first problem is that work teams do not always manage creativity and innovation well, especially when partnering with other work teams on highly complex projects that demand greater interdependence and collaboration, which can constitute as much as 90% of today's organizational projects. The second problem is that researchers struggle to define and measure creativity and innovation for the past decade resulting in significant variation both within and between creativity and innovation scales that have restricted meaningful theoretical discoveries and advances. The current study is significant because it introduces a novel instrument derived by John Turner that measures team creativity and innovation processes as a single unit, thereby raising the level of theoretical sophistication and leading to better practical applications. After conducting factor analysis, the current study validates six factors, including 36 indicators, and measures team creativity and innovation processes as complex adaptive systems (CAS). The current study recommends deploying the new instrument in other sectors beyond the IT sector and using multilevel techniques that include the individual and executive/organization levels of analysis.

Shared mental models (SMM) and Transactive memory systems (TMS) have been advocated as the main team learning mechanisms. Despite multiple appeals for collaboration, research in both these fields has progressed in parallel and little effort has been made to integrate these theories. The purpose of this study was to test the relationship between SMM and TMS in a field setting and examine their influence on various team effectiveness outcomes such as team performance, team learning, team creativity, team members' satisfaction and team viability. Contextual factors relevant to an organizational setting were tested and these included team size, tenure, country of origin, team reward and organizational support. Based on responses from 41 teams from 7 industries across two countries (US and India), results indicate that team size, country of origin and team tenure impact team performance and team learning. In addition, team reward and organizational support predicted team viability and satisfaction. Results indicated that TMS components (specialization, coordination and credibility) were better predictors of team outcomes than the omnibus TMS construct. In particular, TMS credibility predicted team performance and creativity while TMS coordination predicted team viability and satisfaction. SMM was measured in two different ways: an average deviation index and a 6-item scale. Both methods resulted in a conceptually similar interpretation although average deviation indices provided slightly better results in predicting effectiveness outcomes. TMS components moderated the relationship between SMM and team outcomes. Team performance was lowest when both SMM and TMS were low. However, contrary to expectations, high levels of SMM did not always result in effective team outcomes (performance, learning and creativity) especially when teams exhibited high TMS specialization and credibility. An interaction pattern was observed under conditions of low levels of SMM such that high TMS resulted in higher levels of team outcomes. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

Emotionally disconnected employees, about 70% in the U.S., do not experience positive affect at work, are disengaged, and not creative. The purpose of this quantitative quasi-experimental study was to investigate the effects of leaders' endorsement of idiosyncratic workplace fun (independent variable) and organizational playfulness climate (independent variable) on organizational creativity (dependent variable). Complexity-based theoretical perspectives on organizational creativity framed this quantitative study. Data were collected via three survey instruments at two data points from 7 project teams, divided into two experimental groups, at 6 companies in northwestern United States. One group received an intervention for 1 month. Pearson's correlation analysis showed no significant relationships between leaders' endorsement of idiosyncratic workplace fun and organizational playfulness climate with organizational creativity. Repeated measures analysis of variance revealed that the 2 experimental groups did not differ significantly in terms of their creativity when team leaders endorsed idiosyncratic workplace fun and when project teams worked in an organizational playfulness climate. Bivariate regression analysis and multiple regression analysis showed that leaders' endorsement of idiosyncratic workplace fun and organizational playfulness climate did not predict organizational creativity, neither individually nor collectively. Although the study's findings cannot be used to affect social change, the examination of the relationships between leaders' endorsement of idiosyncratic workplace fun, organizational playfulness climate, and organizational creativity in the future might yield important insights about the mechanisms facilitating the emergence of organizational creativity at companies.