The Boon and Bane of Creative “Stars”: A Social Network Exploration of How and When Team Creativity Is (and Is Not) Driven by a Star Teammate

Abstract

Although previous research has highlighted the disproportional contributions of star employees to their teams, an emerging line of research has begun to examine the potentially negative consequences of team stars. Drawing on a social model of team creativity, we develop a dualistic model of the influences of team creative stars on team creativity. Specifically, we explore the roles of two types of team members—star and nonstar employees—in driving team creativity. Across two multiwave and multisource field samples, we find that a creative star who occupies a central position in the team workflow network has both a positive direct effect on team creativity and a negative indirect effect on team creativity via reducing nonstars’ learning (i.e., exploratory and exploitative activities). Our study also reveals that team coordination can mitigate the detrimental effect of a star’s centrality on nonstars’ learning behavior, and subsequently buffer the indirect effect on team creativity.

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