团队地位层级与团队创新：基于层级功能主义与功能障碍主义整合的视角

Although practitioners tend to devalue the existence of hierarchy and call for flatter organizations and teams, this project posits that the role of hierarchy could be more complex than anticipated in the context of team innovation. In fact, there are two opposing views of hierarchy in the literature. Functionalist view asserts that hierarchy facilitates coordination and thus is beneficial for teams while dysfuncionalist view holds that hierarchy harms the effectiveness of teams. The current project joins in this conflicting conversation by studying how status hierarchy affects team innovation..Specifically, I propose that the effect (whether positive or negative) of status hierarchy depends on the stage of team innovation. Team innovation generally consists of two stages—idea generation and idea implementation. I propose that in the stage of idea generation, status hierarchy negatively affects team creativity via decreased minority dissent and increased status conflict, supporting the functionalist view of hierarchy. Whereas, in the stage of idea implementation, status hierarchy facilitates team innovation by strengthening the relationship between team creativity and team innovation implementation, thus supporting the dysfunctionalist view of hierarchy. Besides, I propose that the effects of status hierarchy are contingent upon team climate, goal, and resource constraint. Thus, this project further explores whether team psychological safety climate and team goal salience would alleviate the negative effect of status hierarchy on team creativity as well as whether organizational resource supply to the team would enhance the moderating role of status hierarchy in the team creativity—team innovation implementation relationship..This project plans to conduct four studies to examine the proposed hypotheses. Study 1 will adopt a qualitative approach (i.e., interview innovation teams) to getting an overall comprehension of the role of status hierarchy in team innovation processes. Study 2 and Study 3 will conduct a three-wave field survey and a lab experiment respectively, aiming to test the effects of status hierarchy in the stage of idea generation. Study 4 will conduct a two-wave survey on real product development teams to test the effects of status hierarchy in the stage of idea implementation. Taken together, this project provides significant theoretical and practical implications for team innovation management.

本项目抓住创新中层级的悖论，整合层级功能主义和功能障碍主义的视角，探究团队地位层级对团队创新的影响。通过区分创新阶段，本项目提出，在创意产生阶段，地位层级会抑制少数派异议、增强地位冲突，从而负向影响团队创造力；在创意实施阶段，地位层级会增强团队创造力与团队创新实施的关系，提升创意转化。此外，地位层级的作用可能受到团队氛围、目标和资源约束的影响。因此本项目进一步探究团队心理安全氛围和团队目标凸显性如何削弱地位层级对团队创造力的负向影响，以及团队获得的组织资源供给如何增强地位层级对团队创造力与团队创新实施的调节效用。本项目计划开展四个研究。研究一采用质性访谈对团队创新中地位层级的作用形成总体认识。研究二和研究三分别开展一项三阶段问卷调查和一项实验室研究，探究地位层级在创意产生阶段的作用。研究四将开展两阶段问卷调查检验地位层级在创意实施阶段的作用。本项目将为团队创新管理提供重要的理论和实践启示。

伴随着数字经济时代的来临，扁平化组织设计逐渐成为管理实践者呼吁和倡导的新趋势。人们希望通过去层级化的组织架构提升组织的敏捷性、促进组织的创新。然而层级的作用是复杂的，对于企业创新活动和绩效产出，去层级化不一定总是最优的选择。本项目基于层级功能主义与层级障碍功能主义的理论观点，针对层级如何影响个体、团队和组织的创新活动与绩效开展了多层次的研究。.首先，为了夯实本项目的理论基础，本人与合作者对层级相关的文献进行了系统梳理，并选定团队水平，厘清了团队层级的概念内涵，总结了团队层级发挥作用的机理以及权变条件。该理论总结工作为其他的实证研究工作开展提供了框架。.其次，本项目围绕地位层级开展了一系列研究工作。具体地，在一项实证研究中，我们聚焦于团队内的容错行为，该行为被认为是影响团队学习与创新的重要因素。我们从地位层级的视角出发，发现犯错者的地位影响了同事间的差错容忍度。在另一项实验研究中，我们通过设计在线团队创新任务，考察了团队地位层级与团队创新之间的关系，初步发现地位层级对不同阶段的团队创新活动会产生差异化的影响。.再者，本项目聚焦创业情境，探讨了权力层级对企业创新活动和绩效产出的影响。在一项研究中，我们考察了创业团队的权力构型与企业创新活动的关键指标——研发强度之间的关系，发现创业团队中高权力者的占比越高，企业的研发强度越大。在另一项研究中，我们发现创业团队的权力集中度——权力掌握在少数人手里对新创企业绩效存在“双刃剑”效用。.以上关于地位层级与权力层级的研究表明，层级对于创新活动而言既有其积极的作用，也有负面的影响。因此管理实践者需要以更加审慎的态度看待去层级化的实践。.总体而言，本人围绕项目主题开展了较为系统的研究工作，并取得了较好的研究进展，相关研究成果发表于Journal of Business Venturing和《管理世界》等国内外高水平期刊。伴随着项目的推进，本人开展了较为深入的国际合作，并在学生培养上取得了一定的成绩。