Learning climate and innovative creative performance: Exploring the multi-level mediating mechanism of team psychological capital and work engagement

Drawing on positive organizational scholarship, the resource-balance perspective, and an extensive body of creativity-performance literature, the present study proposes and tests a multi-level model of (1) the mediating role of team psychological capital in the relationships between team learning climate and team innovativeness; (2) the mediating role of work engagement in the relationship between team learning climate and creativity at the individual employee level; (3) the mediating role of work engagement in the relationship between team psychological capital and employee creativity; and (4) the cross-level moderating role of team psychological capital in the relationship between work engagement and employee creativity. Survey data were collected from 78 team leaders and 413 other employees of 10 companies in Taiwan's information software industry. The results of hierarchical linear modeling indicated that team psychological capital mediated the relationships between team learning climate and team innovativeness; work engagement mediated the relationships between employee creativity and both team learning climate and team psychological capital; and team psychological capital moderated the relationship between employee creativity and work engagement. The results of this pioneering investigation of the multi-level dual mediation, via team psychological capital and employee work engagement, of team learning climate's impact on innovative/creative performance outcomes imply that managers should seek to reinforce psychological capital and raise engagement levels within their research-and-development teams to enhance such teams' innovative/creative performance.