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| The Double-edged Sword Effect of Paradox Mindset on Team Innovative Strategy Decision-making: An Event-analysis-based Quasi-Experimental Study |
| Li Chunxuan1,Li Cirong1,2,Yang Yanyu1,Liu Jing1 |
| (1.School of Business and Management, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China;2.Research Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Jilin University, Changchun 130022, China) |
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Abstract With the intensification of market competition, it has become a key driving force for the sustainable development of enterprises to seek technological breakthroughs to pursue or maintain competitive advantages. The technological innovation is characterized by situational dynamics, time urgency and path ambiguity. It has become an important process for enterprises to form unique competitiveness by making high-quality innovative strategic decisions in order to integrate innovation contradictions. The R&D team is the basic unit for performing innovation tasks in an enterprise and the core unit of solving contradictions. How can it achieve the above goals for the enterprise? This is an urgent problem in both theory and practice. With the development of innovative strategic decision research, scholars' attention has gradually been shifted to the internal psychological factors. Team mindset, especially team paradox mindset which is viewed as inner foundation of teams to deal with paradoxical problems has aroused concern. Despite the fact that the paradox mindset has been seen as the fundamental cognitive elements of creativity emergence, its complexity could induce the negative cognitive effect. Yet the positive and negative effects of this mindset are seldom tapped, which leads to the unclear role and function of team paradox mindset in the innovative strategic decision-making process of R&D team.#br#The paradox theory presumes that salient tensions can spur a virtuous cycle that enhances creativity, innovation, and sustainability, but tensions can also lead to a vicious cycle that increases anxiety and defensiveness. The cognitive fit theory states that the problem-solving mental representation and behavior are independent on whether problem-solving skills (such as knowledge level, cognitive ability, and thinking style) match the task representation, and task performance is affected accordingly. Paradox mindset refers to mental templates in which the actors recognizeand accept the persisting inconsistencies of contradictory forces.It can not only help teams to deal with diverse information and make reasonable judgments, but also avoid potential task conflicts in the interaction of knowledge and opinions among team members. Conversely, paradox mindset may be harmful when matched to inappropriate task representation. Controversy caused by abundant new information and ideas will lead to conflicts among members. In view of this, this study constructs a dual-path integration model of paradox mindset on team innovation strategy decision-making process to explore both the positive and negative effects of paradox mindset simultaneously.#br# As mentioned above, the paradox mindset is not appropriate for all tasks or the entire course of a task. The matching of task representation with the characteristics of paradox mindset is the core to fully play its positive role. The external environment often undergoes unpredictable changes in innovation, so that the team also needs to face the adjustment of mission objectives and specific implementation plans. The analysis of the paradox mindset characteristics shows that it is more suitable for dealing with complex tasks which is high uncertainty and require broader knowledge and skills, rather than tasks with the standardized process. That means the paradox mindset may be more likely to play a positive role after the R&D tasks are adjusted. Therefore, this study regards R&D task adjustment as a key event to stimulate the positive effect path of team paradox mindset and explores the impact of paradox mindset on team innovation strategic decision-making process in different R&D task scenarios.#br#On the basis of the cognitive fit theory, this study investigates how team paradox mindset influences team innovative strategic decision-making process in “double sword” pathways. The hypotheses are tested by the longitudinal data from 145 teams with five measurement occasions over one-and-a-half-month period. The hierarchical linear model is used and the event analysis is conducted and both team members and supervisors are in a quasi-experiment setting. It is found that firstly before the R&D task adjustment, the team paradox mindset is positively related to team conflicts, and is negatively related to team decision complement. Secondly after the R&D task adjustment, the team paradox mindset is positively related to team decision complement and negatively related to team conflict. Thirdly the team workload/information elaboration mediates the relationships between team paradox mindset and team conflict/team decision comprehensiveness. The findings provide the practical evidence for R&D team cognition and task management.#br#
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Received: 05 February 2022
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