The Influence of the Team Climate on Team Innovation performance: An Empirical Study Based on Chinese High Technology Innovation Teams

Team has become one of the most important strategic resources in the organization. However, the overall effect of team is often difficult to achieve in the practical application of team in China´s enterprises. According to the investigation of high technology innovation teams and the relative literature reviews, the team climate is an important influencing factor for achieving the overall effect of team. Therefore, a conceptual model including five components of team climate (which are Leadership Behavior, Member Heterogeneity, Role Expectation, Team Trust, Team Commitment), and Team Innovation Performance, were set up. Further questionnaire survey was done, data were collected from 137 high-tech innovation teams in China and analyzed statistically using the Structural Equation Model (SEM) for testing the theoretical hypotheses. The conclusions were drawn that the components of team climate has interaction: Leadership Behavior, Member Heterogeneity and Role Expectation have significant influence on Team Trust and Team Commitment, Team Trust has a significant positive effect on Team Commitment. Moreover, the team climate has the strongly positively effect on team innovation performance, specifically, Member Heterogeneity and Role Expectation have significant positive effect on Team Innovation Performance through the full mediate impact of Team Trust and Team Commitment, while, Leadership Behavior have significant positive effect on Team Innovation Performance through the semi mediate impact of Team Trust and Team Commitment, namely, Leadership Behavior has directly impact on Team Innovation Performance as well as has indirectly impact on Team Innovation Performance by the mediate impact of Team Trust and Team Commitment.