Building Identity in Diverse Teams: The Effect of Paradoxical Leadership on Team Creativity

Drawing on role system theory, we theorized and tested the effect of paradoxical leadership (PLB), defined as leaders’ seeming contradictory yet interrelated behaviors to meet competing demands in the workplace, on the relationship between cognitive diversity and team creativity. Analysis of lagged, multisource data of 513 employees in 103 work teams showed that cognitive diversity and PLB has an interaction effect on team creativity: this relationship is positive when PLB was high, but negative when PLB was low. Further, team creative role identity mediates this interaction effect on team creativity. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.