The dark side of team dynamics: how team differential atmosphere undermines team creativity.

Introduction: Team Differential Atmosphere (TDA)-a climate-level perception of rigid "insider" and "outsider" boundaries created by leaders based on relational closeness-has emerged as an important barrier to creativity in multicultural teams. Although inclusive leadership is widely recognized as a catalyst for innovation, the specific micro-mechanisms by which its opposite, TDA, disrupts team dynamics remain unclear. Drawing on Social Information Processing Theory (SIPT), this study positions TDA as a distinct signal of identity exclusion, distinguishing it from Leader-Member Exchange Differentiation (LMXD). Methods: Data were collected from 79 innovation teams using a multi-source approach, and a moderated mediation model was developed and tested. Results: The results indicate that: (1) TDA, as a manifestation of non-inclusive leadership, significantly inhibits team creativity; (2) this inhibition occurs via two distinct pathways: team collaboration (reduced collaborative behaviors) and joint decision-making (impaired information integration); and (3) team empathy, as a key collective emotional resource, can buffer the detrimental effects of TDA on these processes. Discussion: This study contributes to the literature by distinguishing the "identity threat" signal of TDA from the performance-related signal of LMXD and by clarifying how differential structures can adversely affect team interaction processes and creativity at the team level. It further identifies Team Empathy as a bottom-up resilience resource that buffers these negative effects in multicultural teams.