千金买骨的情怀:平庸同伴的存在对个体创造力的影响--心理安全与组织态度的联合作用

“Spend a thousand pieces of gold for the bones of the horse”:Motivated poor performers,psychological safety,organizational response,and creativity

在极端重视高端人才的今天,创新团队中的平庸员工犹若亮度反差的“马赫带”,刺眼而又微不足道。已有研究多基于资源观探讨平庸员工对组织的消极作用,缺乏对其价值的整体考量。本文基于下行社会比较理论,旨在从人际互动角度挖掘平庸员工的隐性价值,通过设计三项研究(含补充研究),检验感知平庸同伴存在对个体创造力的影响机制。研究1的实验研究揭示,平庸同伴存在有助于提升个体心理安全感,而组织善待平庸员工会加强这一效应;研究2的跨层次分析进一步验证了心理安全感的中介效应,且发现该效应的强度取决于组织善待程度;研究3的补充分析揭示,平庸同伴的存在尽管削弱同伴间的整体支持力度,但通过提升心理安全感促进个体创造力,且从总体上正向影响创造力。本文为完善团队异质性的理论和实践提供了新的视角,并印证了中国传统文化中的“千金买骨”情怀不仅彰显“不让一个人掉队”的时代精神,更是一种管理智慧和具有生命力的人才策略。

As top talent is becoming more important today,poor performers in innovation teams are considered insignificant and not easily tolerated by organizations.Previous studies have also focused on the dark side of poor performers,from a resource perspective.However,not every poor performer is as destructive as a de-energizing employee who spreads negativity and disrupts the organizational climate.Through the attribution process of poor performance,we find that there is a special group of“high conscientiousness and low ability”among poor performers.They are still poor in performance due to the uncontrollable factors of low ability and mediocre intelligence,however,they are diligent and work without complaint.We define these“willing but unable to do their own jobs well”as motivated poor performers.In a high-challenge and high-risk innovation team,related research believes that from the perspective of social interaction,the perceived psychological safety of high-performance employees will be enhanced by downward social comparison with a person worse than them.Psychological safety is the basic requirement for innovation tasks.Therefore,the existence of motivated poor performers may positively affect individual creativity.Moreover,a traditional Chinese story talked of a king in ancient China who spent a thousand pieces of gold to buy the bones of a horse to indicate his desire for a swift horse.Making a parallel,being kind to the low-performance person can deliver a signal that the organization extremely values top talents and has a higher degree of fault tolerance toward them,which may improve talents’psychological safety.Therefore,the positive effect of motivated poor performers on an organization may be influenced by organizational attitudes.The purpose of this research is to explore the mechanism of perceived existence of poor performers on individual creativity and the moderating role of organizational attitudes in this process.Based on the downward comparison theory,three studies were designed.In study 1,we embedded an experiment in the recruitment and assessment of college students’associations.Using an experimental method,the relationship between perceived poor performers and perceived psychological safety was explored(Experiment A)and the moderating effect of organizational response to motivated poor performers on this relationship was revealed(Experiment B).Experiment A considered if there were motivated poor performers in the group as a categorical variable,and 152 valid samples were collected.Experiment B used a 2×2 mixed design,with interviewer attitude as a between-group variable and whether there were motivated poor performers as a within-group variable.In study 2,HLM and MPLUS7.0 were used to further test the cross-level moderated mediation effect of organizational response to motivated poor performers on the relationship between the existence of motivated poor performers and psychological safety.The data were collected from 60 teams from 18 enterprises in the industry of intelligent manufacturing and advanced materials,with an effective sample of 53 teams and 317 people.Additionally,by using a nested path analysis,study 3 introduced coworker support as a mediating variable of the second path,tested the influence of the two paths,and determined the total effect of the existence of motivated poor performers on individual creativity.The data were collected from 350 employees at a design institute.The results are as follows.The experimental study 1 revealed that the existence of motivated poor performers promotes individual psychological safety and that friendly organizational response(compensation)to motivated poor performers will strengthen the above positive effect.The multilevel analysis in study 2 further verified the moderated mediating effect.It showed that the existence of motivated poor performers has a stronger positive effect on individual creativity when organizations respond to motivated poor performers with a higher-level compensation.The nesting path analysis in study 3(additional study)revealed that the existence of motivated poor performers,although it weakens perceived coworker support,promotes individual creativity by improving perceived psychological safety.Perceived the existence of motivated poor performers have a positive effect on individual creativity on the whole.In summary,the research reveals that motivated poor performers in innovation organizations play a positive role in promoting creativity.These organizations should correctly evaluate the value of motivated poor performers rather than expel them from the team.This result is very different from those in traditional research.This confirms that the traditional Chinese saying,“spend a thousand pieces of gold for the bones,”not only shows the spirit of“not letting one drop out of the team,”but it is also a strategy of management intelligence and vitality.Furthermore,this research contributes to the existing literature in three ways.First,it is a test and extension of the previous attribution model developed by LePine and Van Dyne as wll as Taggar and Neubert.Second,a offers a breakthrough in poor performers’studies suggesting the evaluation of motivated poor performers in terms of their contribution to the whole organization,not in terms of their own performance.Third,it is verified that the downward comparison theory is a good theoretical paradigm to explain the formation mechanism of individual psychological safety in the context of interpersonal interaction.Fourth,we extended the study of team heterogeneity.Most existing studies focus on the heterogeneity in major,gender,education,and other factors,paying little attention to employee ability and performance.This research proposed that capacity differences could be regarded as an important dimension of heterogeneity.