creative leadership strongprocessesstrong in project team development an.pdfVIP

British Journal of Management, Vol. 11, 273–283 (2000) Creative Leadership Processes in Project Team Development: An Alternative to Tuckman’s Stage Model Tudor Rickards and Susan Moger Manchester Business School, Booth Street West, Manchester M15 6PB, UK We propose that theories of project team development and of creativity can be integrated into a new conceptual framework. The framework proposes two structural barriers that bear on team performance, and modifies the well-established team develop- ment model of Tuckman. Creative leadership is suggested as an important means of breaching the barriers. Its differentiating feature seems to be its effectiveness in estab- lishing protocols that sustain the creative efforts of team members. We have designated the protocols ‘benign structures’. Empirical evidence is provided from a range of studies of project teams in industrial settings. Introduction enthusiasm for project teams as the route to high performance has been captured in a multitude of While our conjectures on team development popular and scholarly books, despite warnings potentially address issues for a wide range of of imprecise terminology regarding groups and social groups, we have focused attention on pro- teams (e.g. Katzenbach and Smith, 1993; Payne, ject teams, as a simple yet important subset for 1990). There have also been criticisms that the empirical study. Project teams have become a work has tend