The Synergy Mechanism of Temporal Leadership and Employees’ Synchronization in Innovation Teams

Abstract

Based on the team coordination theory, this paper constructs a theoretical analysis framework for the synchronous cooperation between temporal leaders and employees, with a view to promoting the research and practice of team collaborative innovation from a time perspective. The study consists of three parts: First, how does temporal leadership promote individuals with different time traits to reach a time consensus, so as to produce efficient team creativity under the moderation of employees’ synchrony preference? Second, how does time cognitive conflict derived from team time consensus inhibit the transformation of time consensus into team creativity by weakening synchrony preference? Third, how does temporal leadership help individuals to adjust the mental accounting of time, activate synchrony preference, and thus eliminate the side-effects derived from time consensus? According to the research findings, temporal diversity（time urgency, pacing style, and time focus）is helpful to meet the requirements of diversity time combinations of innovation tasks（e.g. speed vs. quality; long-term vs. short-term）, but only if a time consensus of teams is formed and individuals have a high synchrony preference. Powerful temporal leadership is beneficial to balance temporal individual differences to form time consensus; while this process impacts upon individuals’ established habits of the time, causes time cognitive conflict, weakens synchrony preference, and thus brings adverse effects on team creativity. Therefore, effective temporal leadership also includes a time motivate dimension, that is, it brings individual time arrangement into the team track by activating individual mental accounting of time, time cognitive conflict is reduced, and synchrony preference is improved. Finally, under the synchronous cooperation between temporal leaders and employees, team time efficiency and team creativity are promoted. In conclusion, this study provides a comprehensive analysis framework for opening up the time paradox” of innovation tasks, and also provides a new research perspective and practical guidance for team collaborative innovation. On the one hand, this study extends the application of the team coordination theory in the field of time management, integrates the explicit and implicit time coordination ways, and constructs a collaborative model of synchronous cooperation between temporal leaders and employees; meanwhile, it expands the connotation and measurement dimension of temporal leadership. On the other hand, the research conclusion suggests that enterprises should pay more attention to the cultivation of temporal leadership, enhance the synchronous cooperation ability of team members, and take temporal heterogeneity into account when setting up heterogeneous teams. In addition, leaders should not only improve their time management skills, but also cultivate their temporal incentive power.