A Little Creativity Goes a Long Way: An Examination of Teams’ Engagement in Creative Processes

Using surveys and interview data this research examines teams’ engagement in creative processes. Results of cluster analysis indicated that the more creative teams were those that perceived that their tasks required high levels of creativity, were working on jobs with high task interdependence, were high on shared goals, valued participative problem-solving, and had a climate supportive of creativity. In addition, members of the more creative teams spent more time socializing with each other and had moderate amounts of organizational tenure. Implications for management are discussed.     

Difficult differences pave the creative road from diversity to performance

In this article, we argue that engagement with differences is important for the relationship between diversity and organizational performance. This importance is explained by the increased potential for creativity and innovation coming out of working in diverse teams. We recognize that difference and diversity can act as a double-edged sword for creativity and also contend that such differences are a fundamental condition for novelty and value to emerge. It is because of differences and not despite them that we create at individual, group, and organizational levels and a European approach to this topic – given Europe's history and philosophical traditions – recognizes the major role played of creative tensions and even conflict in innovation and in society more broadly. In this paper, we review literature that relates creativity and business performance, creativity, and diversity and examine the role of disagreement and tension, both conceptually and based on empirical evidence. We conclude by stressing the point that creativity often comes out of difficult differences, a European lesson that is easily forgotten, in Europe as well as globally.     

Leadership of highly creative people in highly creative fields: A historiometric study of scientific leaders

In recent years there has been a marked increase in the study of the influence of leadership on creativity, and the effects of this relationship on organizational performance. While a number of explanations have been broached with regard to the positive effects of leadership on creativity, many of these studies propose different, and often contradictory, methods for leaders to achieve these positive effects on creativity within their organizations and work groups. Additionally, little work has been done examining the effects of leadership on highly creative people in fields requiring creativity. The purpose of this study is to examine two existing leadership theories with regard to their viability as models to explain creative performance of eminent scientists. Eminent scientists represent a population of leaders of highly creative individuals in a field that values the production of innovative ideas and products as a marker of performance. Ninety-three excerpts from the biographies of scientists were content coded for leader behaviors and performance criteria. The results of this analysis indicate that a model based on strategic planning and product championing may serve to explain the positive effects of leadership on creativity in a highly creative population.     

The dynamic componential model of creativity and innovation in organizations: Making progress,making meaning

Leveraging insights gained through a burgeoning research literature over the past 28 years, this paper presents a significant revision of the model of creativity and innovation in organizations published in Research in Organizational Behavior in 1988. This update focuses primarily on the individual-level psychological processes implicated in creativity that have been illuminated by recent research, and highlights organizational work environment influences on those processes. We revisit basic assumptions underlying the 1988 model, modify certain components and causal connections, and introduce four new constructs into the model: (1) a sense of progress in creative idea development; (2) the meaningfulness of the work to those carrying it out; (3) affect; and (4) synergistic extrinsic motivation. Throughout, we propose ways in which the components underlying individual and team creativity can both influence and be influenced by organizational factors crucial to innovation.     

战略聚焦视角下的文化特性与新产品创造力研究

 基于竞争价值框架和战略理论,在新产品开发过程中,企业文化特性与战略聚焦因素的有效适应或协同对新产品创造力有积极的影响作用。企业文化特性是指一组企业成员所共享的价值观、规范、信仰和群体性认知,能够影响并塑造组织成员的认知、动机和能力,因而在新产品研发阶段对企业产生新想法和解决创造性问题的能力均有重要影响。目前相关研究已开始探讨员工所处的企业文化环境对其新颖而有用想法的产生能力(即创造力)的影响。但鲜有研究在企业层面分析企业文化特性与企业战略的交互对新产品创造力的作用机理。        从竞争价值框架和战略聚焦视角出发,深入分析企业不同文化特性与新产品创造力之间的作用关系,建立基于战略聚焦视角的文化特性-创造力匹配模型,并实证检验新产品开发过程中两类企业文化特性对新产品创造力的影响以及战略聚焦变量在这一过程中的调节机理。为了揭示企业文化特性影响新产品创造力的作用机理,在直接检验柔性导向文化和控制导向文化与新产品创造力关系的基础上,深入分析并检验组织内外部战略聚焦变量(长期导向和企业家导向）对上述关系的调节作用。        以209家中国企业为研究对象进行实证研究,结果表明柔性导向文化和控制导向文化均正向促进新产品创造力;企业家导向正向调节柔性导向文化和控制导向文化与新产品创造力之间的关系;而长期导向对柔性导向文化和控制导向文化与新产品创造力之间关系的调节作用是非线性、倒U形的,即在新产品开发过程中,中等强度的长期导向对企业两种类型文化与新产品创造力的促进作用最强。        研究结论为探讨企业文化特性的激励效能提供了新的理论视角,并对企业在新产品开发过程中的战略聚焦规划和创造力管理有重要的实践指导意义。     

组织支持感与工作投入的曲线关系及其边界条件

作为一种工作资源,组织支持感是员工工作投入的重要预测变量。但是,基于社会交换理论,组织支持感也可能增加员工角色外的投入、减少对工作角色的投入。在一定条件下,组织支持感与工作投入可能存在非线性的关系。采用302名证券行业员工问卷,考察组织支持感与工作投入的曲线关系,进一步探索情感承诺对该曲线关系的调节作用。在检验共同方法偏差的基础上,采用多项式回归对研究假设进行检验。研究结果表明,在控制员工的情感承诺后,组织支持感与工作投入呈显著U形曲线关系。情感承诺显著调节组织支持感与工作投入的曲线关系,即情感承诺高的员工,组织支持感与工作投入呈U形曲线关系;而情感承诺低的员工,组织支持感与工作投入呈显著线性关系。总体而言,研究结果进一步支持组织支持感对工作投入潜在的负面影响,尤其是具有高情感承诺的员工其感知到的组织支持只有超过一定水平后才会对工作投入产生积极的影响。     

Integrating Knowledge through Information Trading: Examining the Relationship between Boundary Spanning Communication and Individual Performance*

With the global penetration of Internet technologies, individuals may now cross organizational boundaries to communicate efficiently with others regardless of time and space. Thus, when looking for help in solving work tasks, knowledge workers may just as easily contact individuals in rival firms across the globe as a coworker sitting at the next desk. As a result, management faces questions such as (1) How should firms manage employees' knowledge‐sourcing activities when they span both intra‐organizational and extra‐organizational boundaries, and (2) What is the relationship between different knowledge‐sourcing activities and individual performance? Grounded in the knowledge‐based view of the firm, we investigate these questions using data from Europe's largest information technology (IT) services and management consulting company. Our results provide evidence that organizations should support boundary spanning and knowledge sourcing from both internal and external sources. Results suggest (1) a positive relationship between boundary spanning communication and creativity and general performance, and (2) a negative relationship between a reliance on colocated coworkers as knowledge sources and creativity.     

Leader–member exchange,feelings of energy,and involvement in creative work

This study examined how leaders create the impetus for creativity at work. One hundred ninety-three employees occupying a variety of jobs in Israeli organizations completed surveys at two points in time to assess their perceptions of the quality of their relationship with their leader (LMX), their level of energy, and their creative work involvement. SEM and regression analyses showed that LMX was positively related to employees' feelings of energy, which in turn were related to a high level of involvement in creative work. Factors that leaders should take into consideration in promoting followers' creative behaviors are discussed.     

Experientia Docet: Professionals Play Minimax in Laboratory Experiments

We study how professional players and college students play zero‐sum two‐person strategic games in a laboratory setting. We first ask professionals to play a 2 × 2 game that is formally identical to a strategic interaction situation that they face in their natural environment. Consistent with their behavior in the field, they play very close to the equilibrium of the game. In particular, (i) they equate their strategies' payoffs to the equilibrium ones and (ii) they generate sequences of choices that are serially independent. In sharp contrast, however, we find that college students play the game far from the equilibrium predictions. We then study the behavior of professional players and college students in the classic O'Neill 4 × 4 zero‐sum game, a game that none of the subjects has encountered previously, and find the same differences in the behavior of these two pools of subjects. The transfer of skills and experience from the familiar field to the unfamiliar laboratory observed for professional players is relevant to evaluate the circumstances under which behavior in a laboratory setting may be a reliable indicator of behavior in a naturally occurring setting. From a cognitive perspective, it is useful for research on recognition processes, intuition, and similarity as a basis for inductive reasoning.     

Organizational constraints: a meta-analysis of a major stressor

The stressor organizational constraints, reflecting aspects of the work environment that inhibit or interfere with an individual's performance of job tasks, is prevalent in the workplace. This meta-analysis summarizes findings concerning the relationships of organizational constraints with other variables. Using five search methods, we located 84 research reports that provided data from 119 independent samples that contained 33,998 employed individuals. Fitting a stressor–strain framework, constraints had significant relationships with behavioural (counterproductive work behaviour), physical (somatic symptoms), and psychological (e.g. emotions and job dissatisfaction) strains and with well-being variables. Relationships were also found with all other work environment variables, and most personal characteristics (demographics and personality) except for gender. Moreover, a series of regression and relative weights analyses based on meta-analytic correlations showed that constraints had a unique contribution to strain beyond other stressors. The current meta-analysis shows that many commonly studied variables are related to organizational constraints, and it should more often be the centre of empirical research and theoretical development.     

Moral character: What it is and what it does

Moral character can be conceptualized as an individual's disposition to think, feel, and behave in an ethical versus unethical manner, or as the subset of individual differences relevant to morality. This essay provides an organizing framework for understanding moral character and its relationship to ethical and unethical work behaviors. We present a tripartite model for understanding moral character, with the idea that there are motivational, ability, and identity elements. The motivational element is consideration of others – referring to a disposition toward considering the needs and interests of others, and how one's own actions affect other people. The ability element is self-regulation – referring to a disposition toward regulating one's behavior effectively, specifically with reference to behaviors that have positive short-term consequences but negative long-term consequences for oneself or others. The identity element is moral identity—referring to a disposition toward valuing morality and wanting to view oneself as a moral person. After unpacking what moral character is, we turn our attention to what moral character does, with a focus on how it influences unethical behavior, situation selection, and situation creation. Our research indicates that the impact of moral character on work outcomes is significant and consequential, with important implications for research and practice in organizational behavior.     

How a learning orientation affects drivers of innovativeness and performance in service delivery

Relying on organizational innovativeness for long-term growth and profitability can be difficult, time consuming, and expensive. In the context of service delivery of 395 strategic business units (SBU) in Israel's healthcare industry, this paper examines the role of a learning-orientation as a moderator in an integrative model of organizational innovativeness. We find moderation of the impacts of risk-taking, creativity, competitor benchmarking orientation, and environmental opportunities on innovativeness. Moreover, we find the influence on performance pronounced for high learning-oriented SBUs. The paper shows that learning orientation should be considered for understanding effective innovativeness work for competitive service delivery.     

Creativity and technological learning: the roles of organization architecture and crisis in large-scale projects

Creativity increasingly takes place in organizational settings best described as large-scale, long-time duration projects. Such projects, directed at the development of complex products such as aircraft, autos and computers, are characterized by high levels of complexity including ambiguity as to the ultimate outcome and design of the product. In developing these types of products, firms design organizational structures that are composed of many multi-functional teams, each responsible for the design of some sub-system of the overall project. Through a process of inductive theory building based on a case analysis of one such organization, we propose that creativity is affected by multiple levels of interdependence. We find that even the best attempts at developing an organizational architecture to handle such complexity are never complete and that periodically crises arise during the design process. These crises are significant events where creativity occurs and new technical knowledge is generated, allowing the organization to realize its project objectives. Although the case analysis centers on the relation of context to creativity, we argue that creativity leads to technological learning, which we define as a form of organizational learning.     

市场导向对组织创造力的非线性作用机理——组织二元结构文化与创业导向的影响研究

在我国加快实施创新驱动发展战略中,如何提升企业组织创造力以促使企业创新变得至关重要。企业战略是影响组织创造力和创新的重要情境因素。市场导向和创业导向是新兴经济体国家的企业发展的战略核心。然而,现有研究对市场导向与企业创造性产出之间关系的观点却不一致。创业导向如何影响市场导向对组织创造力的作用也尚未得到关注和研究。本研究以145家企业的979份高层管理人员与核心员工的套问卷数据为样本,研究发现：市场导向对组织创造力产生倒U型影响,且倒U型影响通过二元结构文化（一致性文化与适应性文化）的不同传导机制而产生,即：一致性文化在市场导向与组织创造力之间正向中介效应随市场导向的增强而减弱,并在高度市场导向时转变为负向中介效应,而适应性文化在市场导向和组织创造力之间发挥部分中介效应。研究还发现：市场导向对组织创造力的倒U型影响受创业导向的调节作用,即：当创业导向较高时,市场导向对组织创造力的积极影响随市场导向的增强而逐渐增强,反之,则逐渐减弱。研究结论为提升企业组织创造力提供新的思路和理论参考。     

The Job Demands-Resources Model in emergency service volunteers: Examining the mediating roles of exhaustion,work engagement and organizational connectedness

Using a sample of 887 volunteer emergency service workers in South Australia, we conducted a study based on the JD-R framework to examine the roles of three mediators in the relationship between job characteristics and volunteer well-being. These were (i) exhaustion as a mediator in the relationships between job demands and both poor mental health and turnover intentions; and (ii) work engagement and organizational connectedness as mediators in the relationships of job resources (training and organizational support) with happiness and turnover intentions. Organizational connectedness, a relatively new construct, is a positive state of well-being that involves an emotional connection with other workers, with service recipients and with aspects of the task and the organization's values. Results indicated that all three mediators were important in explaining volunteer well-being. Specifically, job demands were positively related to exhaustion, which, in turn, was linked to ill-health and turnover intentions. Job resources were positively related to work engagement and organizational connectedness, which were, in turn, negatively related to turnover intentions. However, while organizational connectedness mediated the relationship between job resources and happiness, this was not the case for work engagement. The roles of these variables in future research in paid and voluntary work are discussed.     

Organizational Silence and Whistle‐Blowing on IT Projects: An Integrated Model*

An individual's reluctance to report bad news about a troubled information technology (IT) project has been suggested as an important contributor to project failure and has been linked to IT project escalation as well. To date, information systems researchers have drawn from the mum effect and whistle‐blowing literature to gain a better understanding of the factors that influence bad news reporting. More recent theoretical work in the area of organizational silence offers a promising new conceptual lens, but remains empirically untested. In this research note, we integrate key elements of Morrison and Milliken's (2000) model of organizational silence, which has never been empirically tested, with the basic whistle‐blowing model adapted from Dozier and Miceli (1985) . Using a role‐playing experiment, we investigate how organizational structures/policies, managerial practices, and degree of demographic dissimilarity between employees and top managers create a climate of silence and how this climate, in turn, affects an individual's willingness to report. Our results show that all three types of factors contribute to a climate of silence, exerting both direct and indirect influence on willingness to report, as hypothesized. The implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

The energizing nature of work engagement: Toward a new need-based theory of work motivation

We present theory suggesting that experiences at work that meet employees’ expectations of need fulfillment drive work engagement. Employees have needs (e.g., a desire to be authentic) and they also have expectations for how their job or their organization will fulfill them. We argue that experiences at work that confirm employees’ need fulfillment expectations yield a positive emotional state that is energizing, and that this energy is manifested in employees’ behaviors at work. Our theorizing draws on a review of the work engagement literature, in which we identify three core characteristics of work engagement: (a) a positive emotional state that (b) yields a feeling of energy and (c) leads to positive work-oriented behaviors. These key themes provide the foundation for further theorizing suggesting that interactions at work confirm or disconfirm employees’ need fulfillment expectations, leading to different levels of engagement. We extend our theorizing to argue that confirmation, or disconfirmation, of different need expectations will yield emotional experience of varying magnitudes, with confirmation of approach-oriented need expectations exerting stronger effects than the confirmation of avoidance-oriented need expectations. We close with a review suggesting that organizational contextual features influence the expression of these needs, sustaining or undermining the positive emotional experiences that fuel work engagement.     

Social and economic leader–member exchange and employee creative behavior: The role of employee willingness to take risks and emotional carrying capacity

In the current study we explore the relational aspect of leadership for stimulating employee creative behavior. Drawing on leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, we propose that the association between two distinct types of leader-member exchange relationships (social [SLMX] and economic [ELMX]) and creative behavior is mediated by employee willingness to take risks and moderated by emotional carrying capacity. Based on two-wave data from a sample of 147 employees, we surprisingly find only marginal support for the association between SLMX and creative behavior, and, as expected, we find no support for the association between ELMX and creative behavior. We do find evidence of the full mediation of willingness to take risks in these two associations. Furthermore, we also find a positively significant interaction of SLMX with emotional carrying capacity (ECC), but no support for the interaction of ELMX with ECC in predicting employee creative behavior. We contribute to a deeper view of understanding the leadership of employee creativity as a relational process, contingent upon both employee characteristics as well as the nature of leader-member exchange.     

From ideas of power to the powering of ideas in organizations: Reflections from Follett and Foucault

Research on organizational creativity tends to emphasize fairly static notions of coercive power as positional authority and control over scarce resources. The field remains largely silent about power as a positive and generative phenomenon that can produce creativity. We seek to break that silence by amplifying and integrating the work of Mary Parker Follett and Michel Foucault in concert with recent practice-based approaches to creativity. Power in organizational creativity, we suggest, should first of all be explored as processes of connection, abundance and collective agency. We show that whereas established ideas of positional power over is related to assumptions of linearity and singularity of creativity, ideas of power with and power to are associated with a more dynamic, relational and process-based perspective. The latter set of views implies more attention be paid to processes of interactional framing through which people jointly attend to situations, reach new integrations and produce new social realities.     

The relationship between presenteeism and job satisfaction: A mediated moderation model using work engagement and perceived organizational support

Research on presenteeism has largely focused on its prevalence, determinants and consequences on the health of both employees and organizations. To date, few studies have examined the influence of presenteeism on workers’ attitudinal and motivational responses. Based on the Effort–Recovery Theory, this study evaluates the mediating effect of work engagement in the relationship between presenteeism and job satisfaction. Building on previous work, this study also proposes to consider perceived organizational support as a moderator of the work engagement–job satisfaction relationship. Presented in the form of a mediated moderation model, the results of bootstrapped regression analyses show three main results. First, presenteeism is negatively associated with work engagement and job satisfaction. Secondly, work engagement is one of the factors through which presenteeism influences job satisfaction. Thirdly, perceived organizational support moderates the association between work engagement and job satisfaction so that, at a low level of work engagement, feeling supported by the organization makes a difference on job satisfaction. Overall, this research is part of the limited number of studies that have focused on the interplay existing between presenteeism and its consequences in terms of job attitudes.