Intuitiveness and Creativity in Groups: Cross-Level Interactions Between Group Conflict and Individual Cognitive Styles

In this study, we introduced a multilevel perspective in order to identify a group contextual factor that moderates the relationship between cognitive style and creativity. Multilevel analyses of data collected from 306 employees from 50 organizational teams revealed that task conflict had beneficial effects on the creativity of intuitive individuals, but detrimental effects on the creativity of systematic individuals. In contrast, relationship conflict offered a positive context for the systematic cognitive style with regard to individual creativity, but it dissipated the positive effect of intuitive style on creativity. To date cognitive style and conflict literature has been focused on either individual or group-level analysis. In our study we have bridged this gap and our findings have highlighted the context-dependent nature of the cognitive style-creativity relationship.