Membership change in advertising development teams: The role of market knowledge and task elaboration
(A2019-10085)

AUTHORS

Afra Koulaei, USN

KEYWORDS

Membership change; advertising creativity; market knowledge

ABSTRACT

Advertising teams render a sustainable competitive advantage to a firm because they are able to recombine existing knowledge in novel ways to generate new knowledge or innovative outcomes. However, the preexisting relational ties (engendered by repeat collaborations) among the members of core creative advertising teams have the potential to adversely affect team creativity and its innovative outcomes by limiting the process of task elaboration. To overcome this potential downside of advertising teams, firms adopt structural coordination mechanism such as team membership change to elevate the team’s task elaboration and creativity. While effective in stimulating task elaboration, team membership change may also pose specific risks. A high degree of team membership change may reduce the depth of team’s market knowledge that can be of great importance for the successful development of innovative outcomes such as creative advertisements. The findings suggest that marketing managers may need to reevaluate their stance toward the role of team membership change in creativity and innovation.