ABSTRACT
Although it is commonly recognized that individuals who strive to exhibit their true selves tend to harvest desirable workplace outcomes, the effects of such striving on team outcomes have received limited attention. Drawing on self-verification theory and team cognition literature, this study extends self-verification striving to the team level and investigates its role in fostering team creativity. We propose that team self-verification striving sequentially promotes team cross-understanding and team knowledge sharing, which in turn enhance team creativity. Further, we hypothesize that task interdependence strengthens the impact of team self-verification striving on team cross-understanding and its indirect effect on team creativity. Support for the research model was obtained from two time-lagged, multisource survey studies (Study 1: N = 75 teams; Study 2: N = 93 teams). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.