A Social-Cognitive Framework of Multidisciplinary Team Innovation
Topics in Cognitive Science, Vol. 2, No. 1, Pg. 73-95, 2010.
Susannah B. F.
Paletz, Christian D.
Schunn
The psychology of science typically lacks integration between cognitive
and social variables. We present a new framework of team innovation in
multidisciplinary science and engineering groups that ties factors from
both literatures together. We focus on the effects of a particularly
challenging social factor, knowledge diversity, which has a history of
mixed effects on creativity, most likely because those effects are
mediated and moderated by cognitive and additional social variables. In
addition, we highlight the distinction between team innovative
processes that are primarily divergent versus convergent; we propose
that the social and cognitive implications are different for each,
providing a possible explanation for knowledge diversity's mixed
results on team outcomes. Social variables mapped out include formal
roles, communication norms, sufficient participation and information
sharing, and task conflict; cognitive variables include analogy,
information search, and evaluation. This framework provides a roadmap
for research that aims to harness the power of multidisciplinary teams.
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