Effects of team knowledge management on the creativity and financial performance of organizational teams

An increasing number of organizations are turning to teams for innovation and creativity. The present study investigated the effects of team knowledge management (TKM) on the creativity and financial performance of organizational teams. Our analysis of data collected from 65 sales teams, across 35 branches of a Korean insurance company, showed that team knowledge utilization (but not team knowledge stock) was positively related to team creativity, which in turn predicted team financial performance over the 6-month period. The positive effects of knowledge utilization were stronger when team leaders had a systematic cognitive style and when teams were exposed to high environmental uncertainty. Furthermore, the systematic cognitive style of leaders had a positive main effect on team creativity and positively moderated the relationship between team knowledge stock and team creativity. The implications of these findings were considered, and some possible directions for future research were suggested. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.