The effects of relational team-composition on the emergence of team-external knowledge ties

In this article, we investigate the relationship between team-internal relationships, team-external information seeking, and subsequent creative team performance in a competitive team-innovation task. In doing so, we consider teams in their environment and conceptualize them as social entities that have in-flows and out-flows of knowledge and information: On one side, team members acquire information that helps their teams to productively work on tasks, and on the other side, teams often play a role in providing information to members of other teams. We argue that affective group mate appraisal promotes team members' knowledge acquisition from lower-prospect outsiders (low quality knowledge in-flow), and lowers the attractiveness of the team as a knowledge source for others (decreased knowledge out-flow). Conversely to affective appraisal, professional group mate appraisal promotes team members' knowledge acquisition from higher-prospect team outsiders (high quality knowledge in-flow), while increasing th...