Linking Individual Creativity to Organizational Innovation

We draw on 146 employee‐co‐worker‐supervisor triads from 146 organizations to examine the role of individual perspective‐taking and team creative environment in the association between individual creativity and organizational innovation. Adopting an interactionist perspective, we find that the link between individual creativity and organizational innovation is most clearly strengthened when individual perspective‐taking and team creative environment are both high. Neither individual perspective‐taking nor team creative environment alone moderated the relationship between creativity and innovation.     

The Impact of Organizational Factors on Psychological Needs and Their Relations with Well-Being

Purpose

The purpose of the present research was to examine the relationships between perceived organizational support, perceptions of supervisor’s interpersonal style, psychological need satisfaction and need thwarting, and hedonic and eudaemonic well-being.

Design/Methodology/Approach

In Study 1 (n?=?468), we tested a model in which workers’ perceived organizational support and their perceptions of their supervisor autonomy support independently predicted satisfaction of the workers’ needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which in turn predicted aspects of hedonic and eudaemonic well-being. In Study 2 (n?=?650), workers’ perceptions of supervisor controlling behaviors and need thwarting were added to the hypothesized model tested in Study 1. Scales of work satisfaction and positive affect were used to assess hedonic well-being, and a scale of psychological well-being was used to assess eudaemonic well-being.

Findings

Perceived organizational support and supervisors’ interpersonal style related to basic need satisfaction (Studies 1 and 2) and need thwarting (Study 2). In turn, need satisfaction predicted higher levels of hedonic and eudaemonic well-being, while need thwarting was negatively associated with hedonic and eudaemonic well-being.

Implications

The present results underscore the importance of understanding the mechanisms through which organizations and managers related to workers’ hedonic and eudaemonic well-being.

Originality/Value

This is the first research to provide evidence for the mediating role of need satisfaction and need thwarting in the relationships between perceived organizational support, perceptions of supervisor’s interpersonal style, and hedonic and eudaemonic well-being. The present results were obtained in two samples of employees from various small to large companies.     

Electronic Creativity Techniques for Organizational Innovation

Innovation is the key to survival. Domestic and international competitions, changing government regulations, and rapidly evolving global market conditions demand constant and visionary innovation. The aim of this paper is to explore ways of using advance electronic and communication technology to improve innovation in organizations. This paper proposes that two group creativity techniques, PMI and synectics, should be implemented electronically in Group Support Systems to complement electronic brainstorming and support group idea generation. Not only are these two group creativity techniques well-developed and popular in the industry, their electronic counterparts have the added capability of transcending space and time constraints. A comparison of electronic brainstorming, PMI, synectics, and their verbal counterparts is discussed in the paper.     

Psychological Well-Being and Parent-Child Relationship Quality in Relation to Child Autism: An Actor-Partner Modeling Approach

Parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often report poor psychological well-being, including a high level of parenting stress and depressive symptoms. Little is known about the extent to which poor parent psychological well-being alters the emotional quality of the parent-child relationship in a context of child ASD. This study examined the association between actor (one's own) and partner (one's partner's) level of parenting stress and depressive symptoms and the emotional quality of the parent-child relationship using a Five Minute Speech Sample (FMSS) in 150 families of children with ASD, aged 5–12 years (85.7% male). Mothers and fathers were aged 38.69 (SD = 5.62) and 40.76 (SD = 6.19), respectively; 76% of mothers and 68% of fathers had a college degree. Structural equation modeling, using Analysis of Moment Structures software, was used to test Actor-Partner Interdependence Models. Results indicated that mother's level of parenting stress and depressive symptoms were associated with her own FMSS Warmth and Criticism toward the child with ASD 12 months later in negative and positive directions. Mother's level of parenting stress was also negatively associated with father's FMSS Warmth toward the child with ASD 12 months later. Finally, father's level of parenting stress was positively associated with his FMSS Criticism toward the child with ASD. Overall, findings indicate that the mother-child and father-child relationship are both impacted by parent psychological well-being in families of children with ASD; however, actor effects are stronger for mothers and partner effects were only found for fathers. Implications for interventions are discussed.     

Organizational Conflict and Individual Creativity

A theory of the interaction of perceptions of conflict and dispositional tendencies on individual creativity is presented and tested. It is argued that there are two broad classes of people: those who are primarily socially oriented and those who are primarily instrumentally oriented. Further, on tasks that match their orientation, individuals are proposed to generally adhere to patterns and strategies that experience has taught them are most likely to work. This should mitigate against creativity. On tasks outside of their area of specialization, however, individuals are typically expected to be more random in their thinking, which should promote creativity. Perceived conflict is argued to lead to a reversal of this pattern, however. That is, perceptions of conflict were expected to promote creativity on tasks within, and reduce it on tasks outside of, individuals area of primary interest. These ideas were tested in two studies, one with university employees and one with minority students. The results of both studies generally supported the theory.     

States-of-Mind in Psychopathology and Psychological Well-Being

This study investigated the states-of-mind model of depression, anxiety, anger, life satisfaction and happiness in four ways. Three hundred and ninety-eight undergraduate students from Singapore participated in this study. First, states-of-mind ratio and positive automatic thoughts were positively correlated with life satisfaction and happiness, and negatively correlated with anxiety, depression, and anger. In contrast, negative automatic thoughts were positively correlated with anxiety, depression, and anger, and negatively correlated with life satisfaction and happiness. Second, the BSOM categories based depression-related automatic thoughts was able to significantly differentiate among levels of depression, happiness, life satisfaction, anxiety, and anger in ANOVA and in terms of variance accounted for as indicated by partial Eta squared. Third, the BSOM ratio was the best predictor for happiness and life satisfaction and second best predictor for depression, anxiety, and anger in terms of variance accounted for as indicated by adjusted R², in comparison to the negative cognition model and positive cognition model. Fourth, both ANOVA results and multiple regression results showed that there is cognitive content-specificity for the BSOM based on depression-related automatic thoughts. Implications and limitations of these findings were discussed.     

The Role of Personality Factors in the Dynamics of Context and Psychological Well-Being

The purpose of this study was to determine personality factors that mediate between context and psychological well-being. A convenience sample of 514 mutlicultural participants from Potchefstroom (n=384) and Mafikeng (n=130) comprising mainly of black and white students was drawn. The participants completed measures on extraversion and agreeableness and psychological well-being in a cross-sectional survey. Context was defined in terms of differentials pertaining to race, socioeconomic differentials and infrastructural resources. Regression analyses indicated the viability of relationships among context, personality and psychological well-being. Structural equation models showed that both extraversion and agreeableness mediate the relationship between context and psychological well-being. Future research using longitudinal designs may study the importance of social context, personality factors and psychological well-being within and between groups.     

Different Types of Religious/Spiritual Well-Being in Relation to Personality and Subjective Well-Being

In this study the authors attempt to present different types of Religious/Spiritual Well-Being (RSWB) and discuss their relation to personality and psychological well-being. The Multidimensional Inventory for Religious/Spiritual Well-Being 48 is employed for this study, which consists of 6 subscales. To find different types of RSWB, an agglomerative cluster analysis on these subscales was performed based on the responses obtained in a nonclinical adult sample (n = 463). A 4-cluster solution was accepted. The clusters were labeled as Religious/Spiritual High, Religiously Oriented, Existentially Oriented, and Religious/Spiritual Low, and were found to be substantially related to Sense of Coherence (n = 263) and Six Factors of Personality (n = 200) in two different subsamples. By presenting a first empirical model for a 4-field typology of RSWB, we hope to further contribute to the ongoing discussion on how to deal with religious/spiritual issues in personality research.     

Knowledge Discovery as an Aid to Organizational Creativity

Computers can play an important role in the creative process. With the abundance of data and increasing speed of computers, creativity can now be stimulated and enhanced with knowledge mined from available data. The process is known as knowledge discovery or data mining. Knowledge discovery is the process of discovering interesting associations among data in the database. Users in the creativity process can feed on the discovered associations to generate creative solutions. The objective of this paper is to present knowledge discovery as an aid to creativity. The paper first presents the concept of knowledge discovery and then discusses the various techniques in knowledge discovery. Mednick's associative theory of creative thought serves as the theoretical foundation for this research.     

Self-Compassion and Psychological Well-Being in Older Adults

Self-compassion refers to a kind and nurturing attitude toward oneself during situations that threaten one’s adequacy, while recognizing that being imperfect is part of being human. Although growing evidence indicates that self-compassion is related to a wide range of desirable psychological outcomes, little research has explored self-compassion in older adults. The present study investigated the relationships between self-compassion and theoretically based indicators of psychological adjustment, as well as the moderating effect of self-compassion on self-rated health. A sample of 121 older adults recruited from a community library and a senior day center completed self-report measures of self-compassion, self-esteem, psychological well-being, anxiety, and depression. Results indicated that self-compassion is positively correlated with age, self-compassion is positively and uniquely related to psychological well-being, and self-compassion moderates the association between self-rated health and depression. These results suggest that interventions designed to increase self-compassion in older adults may be a fruitful direction for future applied research.     

Moderating Effects of Religious/Spiritual Coping in the Relation Between Perceived Stress and Psychological Well-Being

Although the relationship between stress and depressive symptoms is well documented, less is known about the role of coping strategies, in particular strategies for coping via religious or spiritual means. To investigate the relationships among these factors, data was collected with questionnaires completed by 127 MSW students at a northeastern university in 2003. Significant Stress×Religious/Spiritual Coping buffer interactions were found in the relationship between stress and depression. EQS 6.1 and hierarchical moderated regression analysis showed that religious/spiritual coping reduced the impact of stress on depression. Implications for practice are discussed.     

Leisure and Subjective Well-Being: A Model of Psychological Mechanisms as Mediating Factors

Leisure is a key life domain and a core ingredient for overall well-being. Yet, within positive psychology, its definition and the psychological pathways by which it evokes happiness are elusive (Diener and Biswas-Diener 2008). In this paper, we seek to address these issues by delineating leisure and presenting a conceptual framework linking leisure to subjective well-being (SWB). Leisure is defined as a multidimensional construct, encompassing both structural and subjective aspects. Respectively, it is the amount of activity/time spent outside of obligated work time and/or perceived engagement in leisure as subjectively defined. To explain the effects of leisure on SWB, a quantitative summary of theories from 363 research articles linking leisure and SWB was conducted. Based on our findings, we propose five core psychological mechanisms that leisure potentially triggers to promote leisure SWB: detachment-recovery, autonomy, mastery, meaning, and affiliation (DRAMMA). These psychological mechanisms promote leisure SWB which leads to enhanced global SWB through a bottom-up theory of SWB. We discuss how future research can use this conceptual model for understanding the interplay between leisure and SWB.     

Relation of Creativity to Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence

The threshold hypothesis regarding creativity and intelligence suggests that these two constructs are positively correlated except at the higher end of the IQ distribution, where they are unrelated. Much of the support for this hypothesis comes from comparisons of correlations within average and high‐IQ groups. However, a common methodological flaw in these comparisons is that the high IQ group is smaller in variance than the average IQ group. In the present study we equated variances for a better test of the threshold hypothesis. College students in two IQ groups completed tests of creativity and intelligence. IQ and creativity correlated at least as strongly in the high IQ group as in the average IQ group, generally failing to support the threshold hypothesis. However, breakdown of composite IQ into fluid and crystallized IQ indicated minimal support for the threshold hypothesis with crystallized IQ, but support for an inverse threshold effect with fluid IQ. Fluid IQ correlated significantly with creativity in the high IQ group but not in the average IQ group, and this pattern was corroborated by regression analyses. Possible explanations for the pattern of results are offered.     

Gender,Spirituality and Psychological Well-Being

The aim of this study was to determine whether gender moderates the relationship between spirituality and psychological well-being. A secondary data analysis based on a cross sectional survey was implemented. A convenience sample of 508 participants (males = 143, females = 365; age range 18–65 with 66% in the 18–25 category) from the North-West Province of South Africa completed questionnaires on spirituality and psychological well-being after informed consent was obtained. Findings show that gender moderates the relationship between spirituality and psychological well-being. This moderation effect was stronger in the case of existential well-being rather than religious well-being as components of spiritual wellbeing, and also stronger in one of the sub-groups. Future studies may explore the role of contextual factors such as cultural orientation and other socio-demographic variables in this moderation effect, as well as gender based perceptions and practices of spirituality with a view to facilitate gender sensitive psychological well-being programmes.     

The Relation of Psychological Needs for Autonomy and Relatedness to Vitality,Well-Being,and Mortality in a Nursing Home1

Drawing from both self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1991) and Carstensen's (1993) socioemotional selectivity theory, we hypothesized that well-being and health would be facilitated by: (a) greater personal autonomy; (b) perceived support for autonomy from both nursing-home staff and residents friends and relatives; and (c) the emotional quality (rather than quantity) of residents' contacts with friends and family. Results based on structured interview and survey data from 50 nursing-home residents, showed that both autonomy support and relatedness indexes correlated with psychological out-comes. Personal autonomy also was significantly related to mortality at a 1-year follow-up. It also was found that subjective vitality (Ryan & Frederick, 1997) was associated with lower distress and greater well-being, and perceived autonomy and relatedness.     

动物创造力和创新研究概述

充满不确定性的环境里,创造力对于人类和动物的生存和进化都起着十分重要的作用。长期以来动物的创造力和创新能力的研究没有受到重视,但最近这个领域开始受到越来越多的关注。该文对动物创造力的有关研究做了简要介绍,并对该领域的发展做了一些探讨