Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2026

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Psychology

Advisor

Yochi Cohen-Charash

Committee Members

Charles Scherbaum

Harold Goldstein

Joel Lefkowitz

Zhixu Yang

Subject Categories

Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Keywords

Intellectual Humility, Information Sharing, Shared Leadership, Creativity

Abstract

Cross-functional problem-solving teams are often assembled to address complex challenges by combining members’ distinct knowledge, ideas, and leadership capabilities. Yet teams do not always capitalize on these collective resources, because team members do not share the information they uniquely possess. This tendency to withhold information may be lessened by intellectually humility, a personality trait marked by a desire to close gaps in one’s knowledge and openness to what others contribute.

This study was originally designed to examine whether team intellectual humility relates to team creativity through information sharing and shared leadership. However, because of changes in the leadership development program where data were to be collected, the achieved team-level sample (N = 10) was insufficient to support the planned team-level analysis. I, therefore, examined individual-level relationships between intellectual humility and perceived team processes.

I proposed and tested an individual-level model in which individual’s intellectual humility relates to that individual’s perception of information sharing within their team, which in turn relates to their perception of how broadly leadership is distributed on their team (perceived shared leadership). I further proposed that individual intellectual humility may relate to perceived shared leadership both indirectly, through perceived information sharing, and directly, independent of perceived information sharing. I tested seven hypotheses using a panel research design in which individual intellectual humility was measured at Time 1, and perceived information sharing and perceived shared leadership were each measured four and eight weeks later at Times 2 and 3. I collected data from individuals assigned to virtual learning teams as part of a leadership program within a large global Fintech organization. Sixty-eight individuals provided intellectual humility and demographic data. A subsample of 33 also provided perceived information sharing and perceived shared leadership data, with 22 of these 33 providing repeated measures of both perceived information sharing and perceived shared leadership across Times 2 and 3.

Perceived information sharing and perceived shared leadership were moderately, positively, and significantly correlated within Time 2, (rs(33) = .38, CI [.001, .672], supporting the prediction they are positively correlated (Hypothesis 3). A similarly sized, though non-significant, relationship was observed from Time 2 to Time 3, providing no support for the same prediction across time (Hypothesis 4), although the effect size indicates the relationship exists and I did not have sufficient power to detect it. Individual intellectual humility showed very small to small non-significant correlations with perceived information sharing at both times, providing no support for Hypotheses 1 and 2, and with perceived shared leadership at both times, providing no support for a hypothesized direct relationship (Hypothesis 6, Time 2; a preliminary check on Hypothesis 7, Time 3). A mediation model (n = 23) offered no support for the hypothesis that perceived information sharing mediates the relationship between individual intellectual humility and perceived shared leadership (Hypothesis 5), nor for the hypothesized direct relationship, independent of perceived information sharing (Hypothesis 7).

The individual-level sample was too small to test the proposed individual-level hypotheses with adequate statistical power. Accordingly, the findings in this study should be interpreted as exploratory, and as a preliminary indication for a link between perceived information sharing and perceived shared leadership. Future research is needed with substantially larger samples to test these individual-level hypotheses with adequate power, and eventually to test the team-level model connecting these constructs to team creative outcomes.

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