Minority dissent as teamwork related mental model: Implications for willingness to dissent and group creativity

Traditionally, minority influence literature has conceptualized minority dissent (MD) as a driver of divergent thinking (DT) at the individual and group level of analysis. In this paper we argue that DT and MD have a more complex interdependence and DT could in fact be conceptualized as a prerequisite of MD. In an experimental study carried out in two cultural contexts (The Netherlands and China), we tested the effect of an intervention aimed at emphasizing the value of DT on the MD related mental model change, on willingness to engage in MD and ultimately on group creativity. Our results show that members of groups that received the DT manipulation had less negative evaluations of MD compared to members in groups that did not receive the DT manipulation. However, DT triggered group members to engage in MD only in individualistic groups and not collectivistic ones and ultimately led to less creative performance in groups that operated in a collectivistic cultural context. Our study also contributes to the extrapolation of cultural differences in creative performance from individual to the group level of analysis and shows that groups operating in collectivistic cultures have a lower creativity in a divergent thinking task as compared to groups operating in an individualistic culture. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved