Extrinsic Motivation, Team Identification, Personal Goal Progress, and Creativity for the Team

Using the lens of social dilemma, our research advances a more nuanced understanding of the complex relationship between extrinsic motivation and individual creativity contributed to the team. Specifically, we draw on the appropriateness account of social dilemma to build a model explaining how two boundary conditions (i.e., perceived personal goal progress and team identification) and their interplay may produce the positive and negative effects of extrinsic motivation on individual creativity for the team. Two field studies, using time-lagged, multi-source study designs, offered consistent results in support for our three-way interaction hypothesis. Specifically, when a member’s identification with the team was low, extrinsic motivation was positively related to individual creativity for the team only when the member perceived a poor personal goal progress; when personal goal progress was perceived as good, extrinsic motivation was negatively related to individual creativity for the team. However, when team identification was high, individual team members generally performed more creatively for the team, irrespective of their extrinsic motivation and perceived personal goal progress. We discuss implications for theory and practice in this research.