Factors influencing individuals’innovative behaviors in inter-firm governing teams: A multilevel study

Introduction Inter-firm collaborations (i.e. Joint Ventures, Alliances and Consortia) require a “control room” to coordinate and manage inter-firm tasks. The Shared Participant Governance (SPG) (Provan and Kenis, 2008) is an inter-firm governance system that requires a team composed of entrepreneurs or representatives from the involved firms. This team has to manage to reach the planned goals of the inter-firm collaboration and create and implement solutions in order to solve the problems that arise from the interorganizational collaboration and complex inter-firm task execution. The success of the team depends, to a great extent, on the team members’ innovative behaviors. The goal of this study is to examine whether team processes are related to team members’ innovative behaviors. The study adopts a Multilevel Approach and hypothesizes that density of the intra-team Communication Network and Team Shared Leadership (TSL) influence team members’ Individual Innovation Behaviors (IIB). Participants, Research Method and Data Analysis A questionnaire was submitted to members of 28 SPG teams, for a total amount of 101 respondents. A cross-sectional research design with distinct sources of information was implemented. Social Network Analysis was used to measure Communication Network Density . TSL was measured by using the scale developed by Muethel and Gehrlein (2009) and aggregated at the team level. IIB were measured using team members' (self-reported) evaluations on the Holman et al. (2005) scale. Main Results and Conclusions IIB were affected by team level variables. Communication network density had an impact on the four dimensions of IIB (idea generation, suggestion making, idea promotion and idea implementation), while team shared leadership influenced idea generation and idea promotion, Results show that team factors play a role in the enactment of IIB of members of SPG, and thus may influence the performance of inter-firm collaborations.