We would like to invite you to participate in Management Engineering(ME) Seminar.

1. When: June 28th (Thursday), 11:30~13:00
2. Where: Building 9, #9303
3. Speaker: Prof. Myeong-Gu Seo (University of Maryland)
4. Topic: The Creative and Cross-Functional Benefits of Wearing Hearts on Sleeves: Authentic Affect Climate, Surface Acting, and Team Creativity
5. Research field: Organization and Strategic management

* Lunch is provided during the seminar.
* Lecture will be delivered in English.

abstract:
Although team creative processing—generating, evaluating, and elaborating ideas—tends to be laden with emotional expressions and communication, research has largely overlooked how differences in team management of affect influences their ability to produce creative outcomes. We investigate why and when team climates that support members in sharing and responding to authentic affect produce more creative outcomes than teams whose members suppress or fake their genuine feelings. We propose that high levels of team authentic affect climate enhance team creativity by reducing team members’ surface acting, which has harmful effects on creative processing by depleting personal resources and muting affective information. Furthermore, we argue that the creative benefits of authentic affect climate reducing surface acting are more likely in functionally diverse teams, which are often charged with producing creative outcomes but face unique emotional and communication challenges. Results from two complementary studies—a team laboratory experiment and a field study conducted in a Global 100 organization—indicated general support for these hypothesized effects. We conclude with the implications gained from this research for how managers can use authentic affect climates, as opposed to more constrained affect management approaches, to enhance their teams’ creativity.

Keywords: team creativity, affect climate, surface acting, authenticity, functional variety