Mitigating the effects of group negative affectivity on team creativity: the role of autonomy climate and leaders'...

Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory and self-determination theory (SDT), this study examines how group negative affectivity that reflects the compositional input based on team members' affective dispositions is related to team creativity. We further propose that leader emotion management behavior serves as a compensatory resource that may buffer this association. Using multi-source field data from 66 work teams (N = 293 employees and 66 managers), we find that group negative affectivity is negatively related to climate for autonomy, which is positively associated with team creativity. Our analysis also shows that this negative indirect relationship between group negative affectivity and team creativity via climate for autonomy is attenuated when leaders engage in emotion management behaviors for team members. These empirical patterns remained robust under a multilevel specification accounting for the nested structure of the data. Our findings highlight that emotionally responsive leadership plays a critical role in mitigating the negative implications of members' negative affectivity and sustaining autonomy-supportive climates for team creativity.