Malevolent Creativity in Terrorist Organizations

Terrorist organizations are both imitative and innovative in character. While the drivers of imitation have been extensively modeled using concepts such as contagion and diffusion, creativity and innovation remain relatively underdeveloped ideas in the context of terrorist behavior. This article seeks to redress this deficiency by presenting a conceptual framework with which we can understand the complex nature and multiple drivers of creativity and innovation within terrorist organizations. The overriding questions we address are: what factors spark creativity and innovation within terrorist organizations, and are there particular organizational traits that increase an organization's propensity to be creative and innovative? Using insights from industrial and organizational psychology and aided by illustrative examples and case studies from the history of terrorism, we aim to show that the multiple drivers of creativity and innovation are identifiable. By providing a conceptual framework that explores these key issues, we suggest that a much clearer research agenda for these issues may emerge. We conclude with a discussion concerning how our framework can help inform counter‐terrorism practices.     

Narrowing the Creativity Gap: The Moderating Effects of Perceived Support for Creativity

This article examines the role of 3 types of perceived support for creativity in moderating the relation between creative self-efficacy and self-perceived creativity. The findings suggest significant interaction effects for perceived work-group support and supervisor support, but not for perceived organizational support. This study is among the first to (a) examine the importance of perceived support for creativity in unlocking creative potential and increasing creativity in organizations and (b) use interaction terms in structural equation modeling (SEM) to investigate moderator effects in an applied research setting. These results imply that organizational interventions focused on training supervisors and work-group members to support creativity in the workplace may be more effective than broader and less focused interventions at the organizational level.     

Narrowing the creativity gap: the moderating effects of perceived support for creativity

This article examines the role of 3 types of perceived support for creativity in moderating the relation between creative self-efficacy and self-perceived creativity. The findings suggest significant interaction effects for perceived work-group support and supervisor support, but not for perceived organizational support. This study is among the first to (a) examine the importance of perceived support for creativity in unlocking creative potential and increasing creativity in organizations and (b) use interaction terms in structural equation modeling (SEM) to investigate moderator effects in an applied research setting. These results imply that organizational interventions focused on training supervisors and work-group members to support creativity in the workplace may be more effective than broader and less focused interventions at the organizational level.     

Getting What's New from Newcomers: Empowering Leadership,Creativity, and Adjustment in the Socialization Context

Researchers consistently argue that organizations need to generate creative ideas to ensure long‐term success and survival. One possible solution for increasing creativity is to inject “fresh blood” into the organization by hiring new employees. However, past work suggests there may be a number of impediments that stifle newcomer creativity and, further, that encouraging newcomer creativity may compromise other adjustment outcomes. Accordingly, the present research examines how empowering leaders, in conjunction with contextual and relational factors (i.e., organizational support for creativity and newcomers' trust in leaders), facilitate newcomer creativity. Study 1 indicates that empowering leadership positively predicts newcomer creativity and that this relationship is contingent on the organizational context. Study 2 reveals that a more specific and proximal contextual socialization factor–newcomers' trust in leaders–is a more potent moderator than organizational support for creativity. Further, these predictors operate through creative process engagement to influence creativity. Finally, results indicate positive links between empowering leadership and role clarity, attachment, and task performance, suggesting that empowering leadership may serve as an important, albeit overlooked, socialization tactic.     

Creative Self-Efficacy: An Exploration of Its Antecedents,Consequences, and Applied Implications

Creativity and innovation are at the core of important outcomes such as economic and sales growth, production of articles and students' learning. Thus, it is not surprising to find research articles on creativity and innovation across different disciplines such as business, psychology, and education. Given the importance of understanding creativity and innovation, we reviewed the empirical literature examining the antecedents and consequences of creative self-efficacy in the work domain. Our review used the theory of individual creative action and social cognitive theory as guiding frameworks to place creative self-efficacy in the creativity and innovation process, define creativity and innovation, explore how creative self-efficacy has been measured, examine the antecedents and consequences of creative self-efficacy, point out gaps in knowledge and offer suggestions for future research and provide some applied implications. One important finding was that creative self-efficacy has made a significant contribution as a process variable explaining how several organizational and personal factors influence creative outcomes via their influence on creative self-efficacy.     

The Influence of Openness to Experience and Organizational Justice on Creativity

Creative performance is a desired organizational outcome that can be influenced by individual differences and contextual factors. An empirical investigation was conducted to study perceptions of organizational justice, an important situational variable, and its influence on individual creative performance. Literature suggests that organizations look to hire individuals who have individual differences that make them more inclined to produce creative outputs; thus, this investigation also sought to determine how openness to experience, a construct known to have a positive relationship with creative performance, might interact with justice perceptions. This investigation uncovered a main effect relationship between procedural justice and creativity, as well as provided evidence that openness to experience moderates the relationship between distributive justice and creativity.     

工作-家庭支持对员工创造力的影响探讨

采用问卷调查法, 以773对上级-下属配对数据为样本, 探讨了工作-家庭支持对员工创造力的影响及其内在作用机制。结果表明, 在我国文化背景下, 工作-家庭支持由组织支持、领导支持、情感性支持和工具性支持四个因素组成, 其中组织支持和领导支持统称为工作领域支持, 情感性支持和工具性支持统称为家庭领域支持; 工作投入中介工作领域支持对员工创造力的影响; 创造性人格在工作投入与员工创造力关系之间起调节作用。     

Thinking Outside the Clocks: The Effect of Layered‐Task Time on the Creative Climate of Meetings

The turbulence of the new economy puts demands on organizations to respond rapidly, flexibly and creatively to changing environments. Meetings are one of the organizational sites in which organizational actors “do” creativity; interaction in groups can be an important site for generating creative ideas and brainstorming. Additionally, Blount (2004) demonstrated the importance of organizational temporalities for group performance. We draw on both of these literatures and examine how temporal structures influence the climate for creativity, or the extent to which creativity is fostered, within groups. Specifically, we develop a hypothesis linking organization‐ and job‐level temporal structures to the extent to which managers structure meetings with a climate supportive of creativity. Our results demonstrate that a nuanced relationship exists between temporal structures and creative climate such that certain temporal structures appear to either enhance or decrease the creative climate of meetings. We end with a discussion of the implications of the findings for management.     

Creative Climate: A Leadership Lever for Innovation

The working atmosphere within an organization has an important influence on its level of innovative productivity. Organizational leaders influence innovative productivity as well as the climate for creativity and innovation. This exploratory study included 140 respondents from 103 different organizations, 31 industries, and 10 countries, all of whom completed an online survey focused on examining the intervening nature of the climate for creativity and innovation. First, those who perceived more leadership support for innovation had significantly better creative climate scores. Second, those who perceived higher levels of innovative productivity also had better climate scores. Finally, organizational climate as an intervening variable between leadership behavior and innovation was confirmed through partial correlation and mediation analysis. The findings of this study support the pivotal role that creative climate plays between leadership behavior and innovative productivity.     

The Interactive Effects of Self‐Perceptions and Job Requirements on Creative Problem Solving

Over the years, researchers have focused on ways to facilitate creativity in the workplace by looking at individual factors and organizational factors that affect employee creativity (Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin, 1993 ). In many cases, the factors that affect creativity are examined independently. In other words, it is uncommon for researchers to look at the interaction among individual and organizational factors. In this study, it is argued that to get a true understanding of how to maximize creativity in the workplace, organizational researchers must look at the interaction between organizational factors and individual factors that affect employee creativity. More specifically, the current study looked at an individual's perceptions about his or her ability to be creative (i.e., individual factor) and perceptions of requirements for creativity in the workplace (i.e., an organizational factor). The results indicated that individuals who have a high belief about their ability to be creative (an individual factor) were most creative when they also perceived requirements for creativity in the workplace (an organizational factor). Furthermore, individuals who had low perceptions of creative ability were still able to perform creatively when they had high perceptions of requirements for creativity. This suggests that, to maximize creativity, organizations should focus on both individual and organizational factors that affect employee creativity.     

创造性人格与员工创造力:一个被调节的中介模型研究

本文基于动机行动和成就动机理论,构建一个被调节的中介模型以检验创造性人格对员工创造力产生的作用机理。以251套来自主管-下属配对的问卷数据为样本,实证分析结果表明:创造性人格可预测员工创造力产生,学习目标导向与绩效证明目标导向在两者之间起部分中介作用;内在动机能够强化个体目标导向对创造力的作用,并显著正向调节创造性人格对员工创造力的间接效应。最后,论文讨论了研究发现对员工创造力产生的理论和实践意义。     

Transformational and transactional leaderships,empowerment climate,and innovation performance: A multilevel analysis in the Chinese context

Innovation through creativity is an important factor in the success and competitive advantage of organizations. Theory and research suggest that both leadership and organizational climate have important consequences for individual creativity. However, researchers have rarely considered the interactive effects of leadership and organizational climate. This study taking a “Substitute for Leadership” perspective, develops and tests the idea that empowerment climate affect the relationship between leadership and followers' creative performance. Data were collected from 93 teams, including 465 team members and 93 team supervisors, in a large multinational company based in China. Hierarchical linear modelling was used to examine the hypothesized cross-level model. As expected, transformational leadership and team empowerment climate were positively related to subordinates' creative performance and transactional leadership was negatively related to subordinates' creative performance. In addition, the relationship between leadership and subordinates' creative performance was moderated by team empowerment climate. The study resulted in the implication of several major variables for explaining individual creativity in the Chinese context.     

Organizational Development Interventions for Enhancing Creativity in the Workplace

In an era of rapidly accelerating change, many organizations which developed during a more stable era that demanded bureaucratic efficiency find themselves in a crisis of adaptability and commitment. Effective organizations are those which can mainstream both adaptability and efficiency and strike an appropriate balance between the two. This paper evaluates traditional organizational development (OD) approaches to this problem, then presents a new approach to OD based on organizational creativity. Organizational creativity is defined as a deliberate and continuous change-making process of problem generation and formulation, problem solving, and solution implementation, and as synonymous with adaptability and innovation. Unlike traditional OD approaches that lack a strategic perspective and that rely on single interventions, OD should be employed as an innovation process requiring thinking skills in change-making and incorporating interventions as tools. Under the new approach, organizations can learn to mainstream adaptability by doing two things: encouraging employees to master new thinking skills which increases their creativity, motivation, and commitment; and creating an infrastructure that ensures that these skills will be used regularly. Research is reviewed supporting the new approach, and future research directions are suggested.     

Methodological Requirements for Studying Creativity in Organizations

This article begins by broadly defining creativity and then more narrowly focusing on the definition of this construct. The broad methodological issues associated with organizational creativity are then discussed. To a large extent, the methodological requirements for studying organizational creativity depend on theoretical models. The most relevant theoretical models are reviewed. Specific methodological requirements for studying creativity in organizations are then reviewed, with emphasis on issues of validity and reliability. Finally, the article considers how organizational creativity research might be studied in a manner consistent with the methodological issues raised.     

心理弹性如何影响员工创造力：心理安全感与创造力自我效能感的作用

摘 要 通过对350名知识型员工及其领导的配对问卷调查,探讨心理弹性对知识型员工创造力的作用机制。结果表明,心理弹性对心理安全感有显著的正向影响;心理安全感完全中介了心理弹性对创造力的影响;创造力自我效能感调节了心理安全感对创造力的正向作用;创造力自我效能感调节了心理安全感在心理弹性与创造力之间的中介作用。     

Why do employees undertake creative action?

There is much research identifying factors that lead to a creative outcome, but little on what leads employees to begin the creative process in the first place. This research used semi‐structured interviews with 65 engineers to explore the factors and processes involved in this phenomenon. We found that general work motivation, creativity requirements, cultural support for creativity, time resources, and autonomy were all used as cues in deciding whether undertaking creative action would be worthwhile via judgmental processes of expectancy and instrumentality. We also discovered overlaps with the cognate literatures of organizational citizenship and proactivity and explore these in discussing new areas for research.     

Creativity in the Workplace: People,Problems, and Structures

In a dynamic global economy, creativity and innovation are essential requirements for organizational success. Creativity, unfortunately, has not always been seen as playing an important role in the design and structure of organizations. In this article, we argue that creativity and innovation are key requirements for the growth and adaptation of organizations. Subsequently, we review a series of articles, appearing in this issue, about how we might encourage creativity and innovation in the workplace. Some potentially useful directions for future research are discussed along with the methodological issues likely to arise as we seek to understand creativity in the workplace.     

Affective Influences on Judgments and Behavior in Organizations: An Information Processing Perspective

This article reviews and integrates recent research in experimental social psychology and organizational behavior demonstrating the pervasive influence that affective states or moods have on judgments, decision making, and behavior in organizations. An information processing theory, the Affect Infusion Model (AIM) is described that can account for many of the empirical findings and also provides a promising theoretical base for future research in this area. The article reviews a range of experimental and applied studies consistent with the predictions of this model, demonstrating the role of information processing strategies in moderating affective influences on organizational behavior. Specifically, we discuss the influence of affect on such work-related behaviors as worker motivation, creativity and performance, interpersonal judgments and communication, performance appraisal judgments and selection interviews, organizational spontaneity, employee flexibility and helpfulness, absenteeism, and bargaining and negotiation behaviors. The implications of the information processing approach for understanding the influence of affect on organizational behaviors are discussed, and we argue for the greater integration of affect into contemporary theorizing and research in organizational settings.     

When promoting positive feelings pays: Aggregate job satisfaction,work design features,and innovation in manufacturing organizations

This study investigates the relationship between aggregate job satisfaction and organizational innovation. In a sample of manufacturing companies, data were gathered from 3717 employees in 28 UK manufacturing organizations about their job satisfaction and aggregated to the organizational level. Data on innovation in technology/processes were gathered from multiple respondents in the same organizations 24 months later. The results revealed that aggregate job satisfaction was a significant predictor of subsequent organizational innovation, even after controlling for prior organizational innovation and profitability. Moreover the data indicated that the relationship between aggregate job satisfaction and innovation in production technology/processes was moderated by two factors: job variety and a commitment to “single status”. Unlike previous studies, we conceptualize job satisfaction at the aggregate rather than the individual level and examine innovation rather than creativity. We propose that where the majority of employees experience job satisfaction, they will endorse rather than resist innovation and work collaboratively to implement as well as to generate creative ideas.     

Individualism–collectivism and group creativity

Current research in organizational behavior suggests that organizations should adopt collectivistic values because they promote cooperation and productivity, while individualistic values should be avoided because they incite destructive conflict and opportunism. In this paper, we highlight one possible benefit of individualistic values that has not previously been considered. Because individualistic values can encourage uniqueness, such values might be useful when creativity is a desired outcome. Although we hypothesize that individualistic groups should be more creative than collectivistic groups, we also consider an important competing hypothesis: given that collectivistic groups are more responsive to norms, they might be more creative than individualistic groups when given explicit instructions to be creative. The results did not support this competing hypothesis and instead show that individualistic groups instructed to be creative are more creative than collectivistic groups given the same instructions. These results suggest that individualistic values may be beneficial, especially when creativity is a salient goal.