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。     

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.     

职场负面八卦对科技人员创造力的影响机制研究

以职场“冷”暴力理论为切入点,采用层级回归和拔靴法对327份样本数据进行分析验证了职场负面八卦对科技人员创造力的影响机制。结论：职场负面八卦对科技人员的创造力有显著的抑制作用,人际信任在上述关系中起到中介作用;情绪智力在调节职场负面八卦和人际信任之间关系的同时,也调节了人际信任的中介作用,而且当科技人员的情绪智力水平较低时,人际信任的中介作用更为显著。     

Building blocks of idea generation and implementation in teams: A meta-analysis of team design and team creativity and innovation

Although organizations increasingly rely on teams to innovate, little systematic knowledge exists about how to design teams to do so. Building on the model of collaborative creativity and innovation and synthesizing findings from published and unpublished studies, this meta-analysis examines the role of team design on team creativity and innovation. We used random-effects meta-analysis to cumulate the correlations between different features of team design and team creativity or team innovation from 134 field studies representing 11,353 teams and 35 studies representing 2,485 student teams. We found that team tenure is curvilinearly related, autonomy-supportive leadership, task interdependence, and goal interdependence are positively related, and demographic diversity and team size are unrelated to team creativity and innovation. Examining meta-analytic path models, we found that task interdependence and supportive leadership positively relate to team creativity and innovation via team collaboration and team potency. In accounting for the literature, we found a dearth of studies examining team processes, some types of diversity such as racial diversity, and the role of team member turnover. We conclude by providing directions for future research and practical guidance about increasing team creativity and innovation through team design.     

高处不胜寒? 领导工作场所孤独感的多层次双刃剑效应

在组织中,由于存在权力和地位差异等因素,领导者往往难以获得充分的人际关系满足,孤独成为领导者这一群体的普遍体验。事实上,领导者的工作场所孤独感不仅会对领导者自身产生一系列影响,且还具有独特的社会功能,会给团队及其追随者带来后续影响。然而,目前组织管理领域有关孤独感的文献主要集中于探讨员工的工作场所孤独感,罕有研究考察领导工作场所孤独感究竟会造成何种影响。并且,现有研究普遍只关注孤独感的消极效应,缺乏对其潜在积极效应的挖掘。因此,本文将通过3个子研究,结合多层次、多理论、多研究方法的全景研究范式,全面考察领导工作场所孤独感的双刃剑效应及其机制。本研究不仅可以丰富和拓展工作场所孤独感的理论体系,也能为企业发挥领导工作场所孤独感的积极作用与抑制其负面效应提供管理启示。     

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.     

The Cross‐Level Mediating Effect of Psychological Capital on the Organizational Innovation Climate–Employee Innovative Behavior Relationship

Organizational innovation climates have been found to be effective predictors of employee creativity and organizational innovation. As such, climate assessments provide a basis for useful organizational interventions in enhancing creativity and innovation. Researchers now call for better articulation of the motivational mechanisms that link social context to employee innovation. In responding to the above call, this study found that employee positive psychological capital (PsyCap) is more influential than organizational innovation climate on employee innovative behavior. With a large sample (N  = 781) from 16 organizations and a cross‐level analysis, we examined the relationship between organizational innovation climate and employee innovative behavior with employee PsyCap as mediator. The results showed that both organizational innovation climate and employee PsyCap significantly affect employee innovative behavior, and more importantly, employee PsyCap fully mediates this relationship. The innovation journey is a challenging and risky one with many frustrations and discouraging moments from idea generation to idea implementation. The research results presented here imply that to be innovatively effective, organizations are advised to manage both social (organizational innovation climate) and psychological (PsyCap) resources of employees in enhancing employee innovative behavior. Other theoretic and practical implications are discussed.     

Understanding the Relationship Between Information Technology and Creativity in Organizations

Creativity is vital to organizational success. Information technologies (IT) have increasingly become a major influence on organizational efficiency and effectiveness. However, there has been a paucity of research aimed at specifying the relationship between these two areas of scholarship. This article will begin to fill this gap by exploring the ways that IT might influence creativity in organizations. This is important for organizational studies, given that knowledge and information are among the most important ingredients for creativity and are the very things that IT exist to manage. In this article, the creativity literature and much of the management oriented IT literature will be explored to suggest that IT plays an integral role in the creative process within organizations. Specifically, the main benefits that IT affords organizations will be considered and then applied to the requirements for creative production, the stages of the individual creative process, the process of organizational learning as related to creativity, and the creative process within large-scale project-based work. In addition, the conclusion will address the potential limitations of IT in relation to creativity as well as several thoughts concerning future research.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Creative at Each Age: Age‐Related Differences in Drivers of Workplace Creativity from an Experience Sampling Study

Creativity and innovation are essential agents for change processes and accelerating technical development. Having to face challenges, such as demographic change, organizations require individuals who are creative and innovative at each age. Previous research identified affect as a crucial determinant of creativity, even though empirical findings showed inconsistencies. Drawing on literature on age‐related changes in affective experiences, we investigated the moderating effect of employees’ age on the association between daily positive and negative affect and creativity using a daily diary study. A total of 116 employees responded to daily questionnaires twice a day over five consecutive working days. As expected, hierarchical linear modeling analyses revealed differential effects regarding the affect‐creativity association, dependent on employees’ age. Although older employees were most creative on days when they experienced a high level of positive affect (compared to their mean level of positive affect), younger employees were particularly creative when experiencing negative affect (compared to their mean level of negative affect). We discuss practical implications on how organizations could provide creativity‐enhancing work environments for employees at each age.     

How does workplace ostracism hurt employee creativity? Thriving at work as a mediator and organization-based self-esteem as a moderator

Drawing on the socially embedded model of thriving and conservation of resources theory, we explore the negative effect of workplace ostracism on employee thriving. We model organization-based self-esteem (OBSE) as a moderator and extend our examination to the downstream implications of thriving for employee creativity. Using a scenario-based experiment (Study 1) with 387 working adults, we find that workplace ostracism is more likely to prevent workers with higher levels of OBSE from thriving at work. This finding is verified in Study 2, in which we use multiwave, multisource data collected from 207 employees and their supervisors to test the proposed model. The results further show that for employees with higher levels of OBSE, thriving at work is more likely to mediate the relationship between workplace ostracism and employee creativity. These findings provide important practical implications for fostering employee thriving and promoting creativity in the workplace by managing workplace ostracism.     

Diagnosing Organizational Innovation: Measuring the Capacity for Innovation

Organizational innovation involves reconciling many contradictions or paradoxes. Dividing the process of innovation into phases ranging from Activation to Validation and examining each phase in terms of the six Ps of creativity offers a framework for making sense of these contradictions. The Innovation Phase Assessment Instrument (IPAI) was designed to assess organizations according to such an approach. The scale was administered to 454 student volunteers and an analysis of their responses indicated that the IPAI is highly reliable and has substantial construct validity. At a practical level, it can be used for assessing the strengths/weaknesses of organizations in a differentiated way and for making recommendations for improving their capacity for innovation. It is also a source of research questions for examining creativity and innovation in an organizational context.     

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.     

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.     

Feeling Exhausted? Let’s Play – How Play in Work Relates to Experienced Burnout and Innovation Behaviors

Play in work, as one specific type of work designs, is regarded as the possible solution to experienced burnout and could bring the desirable outcomes to organizations. Drawing on Affective Events Theory (AET), we argued that workplace events (such as play) cause emotional reactions on the part of employees (i.e., burnout), which in turn influence workplace attitudes and behaviors (i.e., innovation behaviors). A total of 439 employees completed surveys, and the results showed that play in work positively relates to innovation behaviors. We also examined individual’s attitude toward workplace fun to further understand the impact of individual differences on the relationship between play in work and their feelings and subsequent behaviors. We found that the positive attitude toward fun moderated the indirect relationship between play in work and innovation behaviors via experienced burnout. Based on AET, our results showed that play in work could reduce employees’ experienced burnout which in turn lead to their innovation behaviors. Such an effect of play in work are stronger when an individual has more positive attitude toward fun at work. Practically, it is suggested that play in work would contribute to favorable outcomes in the workplace, but managers should pay attention to individual differences in attitude toward workplace fun to ensure the maximum benefit of play.