Creative Self-Efficacy in Teams: A Socio-Cognitive Approach to Team Performance

Socio-cognitive theory posits individuals as both actors of cognitive processes and recipients of social context’s determinative influences. The present research adopts this theory, seldom used at the team level of analysis, to propose a model in which team member’s composition on a socio-cognitive characteristic influences the development of teams’ socio-cognitive states, further having an impact on team performance. Accordingly, we draw on this theory as a framework to understand the impact of team members’ self-beliefs, specifically their creative self-efficacy, on two team states i.e. transactive memory systems and team identification, that guide team performance on multifaceted tasks. We test the predictions in a longitudinal study with seventy-eight teams. By incorporating tenets of socio-cognitive theory, this research generates novel insights, thereby contributing to the teams’ literature. Simultaneously, it contributes to socio-cognitive research, incorporating it at a level of analysis that has not been the focus of this research stream.