Creative Process in the Face of Change: How Teams Experience and Respond to Pressure

This study examines how the imposition of time pressure affects team collaboration, creative processes, and creative performance. Specifically, this study looks at how the timing of imposed constraints results in different patterns of team process across the team´s workflow. Using an experimental study of teams, results show that disruptions experienced earlier in a team´s workflow result in more steady-state time pacing behaviors and focus of attention than when time pressure is experienced later, which results in pronounced ´spikes´ in these processes. In turn, the more variable levels of team processes that result when pressure is experienced later into workflow are associated with lower levels of creative process and creative performance, as well as lessened team ability to leverage social cognition in the form of transactive memory systems.