COVID-19 has prompted diverse responses from governments and created an extreme context for organizations to operate. In this context, company leaders face fluctuated macrolevel policies, endure physical separation from their members, and must rely on virtual communication to conduct teamwork. Yet little is known about what and how leader communication can be effective in inducing team creativity to survive the extreme context. Building on the affective events theory and the literature on media richness, we develop a theoretical model explicating how leaders’ rich (as opposed to lean) virtual communication can mitigate the negative impact of stringent government responses to COVID-19 on work team creativity via a sequential mediation process: first by inhibiting team anxiety and then by facilitating team information elaboration. Data from a three-stage eight-day longitudinal field experiment, in combination with an experience sampling method with 251 employees, on a chain preschool in eight Chinese cities, provide strong support for the hypothesized model.

COVID-19 引发了各国政府的不同反应，并为组织的运作创造了极端环境。在此背景下，公司领导面临宏观政策波动，与成员物理隔离，必须依靠虚拟沟通进行团队合作。然而，对于领导者沟通如何以及如何有效地激发团队创造力以在极端环境中生存下来，我们知之甚少。基于情感事件理论和关于媒体丰富性的文献，我们开发了一个理论模型，解释了领导者丰富的（而不是精益的）虚拟沟通如何减轻政府对 COVID-19 的严格回应对工作团队创造力的负面影响。序贯中介过程：首先通过抑制团队焦虑，然后通过促进团队信息阐述。