Informal contacts and performance in innovation teams

Purpose - The paper addresses the effect friendly and friendship relationships among members of innovation teams on the performance of the teams. Design/methodology/approach - The members of innovation teams may develop friendly and friendship relationships over time. In our study, we focus on the effect of the frequency of such non‐work relationships on team performance. For this research, we collected full network data on non‐work relationships in a sample of 44 innovation teams and investigate how these “friendly and friendship networks” affect the performance of innovation teams. Findings - As result turns out that the frequency of friendly ties has positive as well as negative consequences on team performance, whereas the frequency of friendship ties positively relates to the performance. Research limitations/implications - The results indicate the importance of informal relations for the performance of innovation teams. Further, it is shown that friendly and friendship relations have different theoretical and practical implications. Future research can overcome the limitations of the presented research by concentrating on larger sample sizes and longitudinal research designs. Practical implications - Building on the results of the study managers can better orchestra innovation teams focussing not only on formal but also on informal contacts. The main practical implication is to strive for friendship contacts and to avoid too strong friendly contacts. Originality/value - The study adds knowledge to the research on informal relationships and performance two‐fold. First, the findings testify that friendly and friendship contacts are different and not part of the same dimension, and there is strong evidence for the importance of informal contacts.