Journal of Management & Organization, page 1 of 23 © 2018 Cambridge University Press and Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management doi:10.1017/jmo.2018.6 Cross-level impact of team goal orientation and individual goal orientation on individual creativity JIAN ZHANG,* MING JI,** CH.MAHMOOD ANWAR, §,|| QUANXI LI* AND GUANGHUA FU* Abstract This study explored how individual and team-level goal orientation influence individual creativity in a work setting. By creating a cross-level theoretical framework, we tested 562 members of 81 teams currently working in various companies in China. The study analyzed the relationships between individual goal orientation, team goal orientation, and individual creativity from cross- level perspective linked by motivated information processing theory. Applying multilevel research method and hierarchical-level modeling, we found that team learning goal orientation and individual learning goal orientation influence individual creativity through different information activities at their own levels. Moreover, team learning goal orientation has a positive and team performance-avoidance goal orientation has a negative effect on individual creativity through team information exchange, while individual learning goal orientation poses a positive effect on individual creativity through individual information elaboration. In conclusion, it was indicated that team members tend to elaborate more work-related information when teams are more learning-orientated. Conversely, team members do not tend to elaborate information when their team has higher performance-avoidance goal orientation. Keywords: individual goal orientation, team goal orientation, individual creativity, individual information elaboration, team information exchange Received 17 September 2016. Accepted 18 January 2018 INTRODUCTION D ue to increasingly intense and unpredictable changes in the industrial environment and competition in the workplace, stirring and enhancing the individual creativity is valuable for companies because individual creativity significantly contributes to competitive advantage of firms (Amabile, 1998; Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004). In terms of role expectations and organizational goals, goal setting is considered as a significant way to instigate creative activity, which could influence motivation of employees via self-regulatory mechanism (Kanfer & Ackerman, 1989). Research shows that goal orientation can effectively influence the motivation of team members (Locke & Latham, 1990). Shalley (1991, 1995) found in a series of research that creativity could be significantly improved by goal setting. Taing, Smith, Singla, Johnson, and Chang (2013) report that goal setting is associated * School of Management, Jilin University, Jilin, China ** School of Marxism, Jilin University, Jilin, China § Scholars Index, Jersey City, NJ, USA || The Methodologists, Islamabad, Pakistan Corresponding authors: Mahmood.Anwar@scholarsindex.com; mingji.phd@messagesafe.io. JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATION 1 at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/jmo.2018.6 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 66.133.78.101, on 22 Feb 2018 at 12:33:42, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available