Climate setting in sourcing teams: Developing a measurement scale for team creativity climate

Creative sourcing strategies, designed to extract more value from the supply base, have become a competitive, strategic differentiator. To fuel creativity, companies install sourcing teams that can capitalize on the specialized knowledge and expertise of their employees across the company. This article introduces the conceptof a team creativity climate (TCC) - team members' shared perceptions of their joint policies, procedures, and practices with respect to developing creative sourcing strategies as a means to address the unique challenges associated with a collective, cross-functional approach to develop value enhancing sourcing strategies. Using a systematic scale development process that validates the proposed concept, the authors confirm its ability to predict sourcing team performance, and suggest some research avenues extending from this concept. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.