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Chapter 9: Creativity in Organizations Jennifer M. George a
a Jes H. Jones Graduate School of Management, Rice University,First published on: 01 December 2007
To cite this Article George, Jennifer M.(2007) 'Chapter 9: Creativity in Organizations', The Academy of Management Annals, 1: 1, 439 — 477, First published on: 01 December 2007 (iFirst)
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/078559814
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Creativity in Organizations Jennifer M. GeorGe Jes H. Jones Graduate School of Management, Rice University Abstract In this chapter, I review contemporary theories and rearch on creativity in organizations. After discussing key definitional issues in this domain, I review the contemporary scholarly literature proceeding from the most molecular of perspectives focusing on within-individual process to the more molar per-spective of the collective creativity that can take place in work grou
跑完步拉伸ps. While the within-individual process featured most prominently in the extant litera-ture is intrinsic motivation, after a treatment of some fundamental issues sur-rounding the intrinsic motivation construct, I review rearch on conscious and unconscious thinking and positive and negative affect as key internal process relevant to understanding creativity. Next, I focus on contextual influences on creativity including safety signals, creativity prompts, supervisors, leadership, and networks. Lastly, I focus on creativity in groups (from both an input and a process perspective). In closing, I reiterate a recurrent theme throughout the review. This is an exciting era for rearch on creativity in organizations with many intriguing questions awaiting future scholarly inquiry. Introduction
东山岛战役Creativity is being increasingly recognized as a critical means by which orga-nizations and their members can create meaningful, lasting value for their multiple stakeholders in today’s dynamically changing environment (e.g., Amabile, 1988; George & Zhou, 2001, 2002). Thus, not surprisingly, popu-lar business magazines such as Business Week, Fast Company , and Fortune regularly have features highlighting creativity in organizations, and practitio-ner-oriented publications such as Harvard Business Review frequently publish articles on how and why managers often inadvertently thwart creativity and on ways they can and should ek to promote it (e.g., Amabile, 1998; Amabile,
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Hadley, & Kramer, 2002; Florida & Goodnight, 2005). Scholarly rearch on creativity in organizations, the subject of this review, is burgeoning.Interestingly, and perhaps reflective of the nature of this elusive construct, theorizing and rearch on creativity is proceeding in anything but a linear fashion. Rather, just as new buds on a tree em to sprout in emingly ran-dom directions that nonetheless might have some underlying order that could be discerned, creativity rearch is developing in a variety of different promis-ing directions that, while building from the common ground of the existing literature, are not necessarily reflective of a unified paradigmatic thrust. This is most likely a good thing given the very nature of creativity and given how little we currently know about it.Underscoring the timeliness of this topic in the minds of academics and practitioners alike, in conducting rearch for this chapter, I uncovered a remarkable number of recent reviews of the literature. For example, in the 2004 Annual Review issue of the Journal of Management , Shalley, Zhou, and Oldham provided an extensive and comprehensive review of empirical rearch on how personal and contextual characteristics, individually and in interaction, influence creativity in organizations. Personal characteristics in their review include the Five Factor personality traits, creati
ve potential (as assd by Gough’s, 1979, Creative Personality Scale [CPC]), and cognitive style (bad on Kirton’s, 1976, 1994, Adaptation-Innovation Theory). Contex-tual characteristics included job complexity, relations with supervisors and coworkers, goals and deadlines, evaluation and reward structures, and the physical work environment. As another example, in Rearch in Personnel and Human Resource Man-agement, Zhou and Shalley (2003) reviewed (a) theoretical frameworks underlying creativity rearch such as Amabile’s (1988) componential model, interactionist perspectives (e.g., Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin, 1993), and more recent theoretical models and approaches (e.g., Drazin, Glynn, & Kazanjian, 1999; Ford, 1996; Mainemelis, 2001; Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003; Unsworth, 2001); (b) rearch design and measurement issues and challenges in creativity rearch; (c) contextual antecedents of creativity; and (d) person antecedents of creativity. Contextual characteristics covered in their review included pro-ductivity and creativity goals, performance evaluation and feedback, social influence, supervisor behaviors, leadership, and job design. Person anteced-ents include CPC, the Five Factor personality traits, and creative lf-efficacy. Coinciding with the reviews in the management literature, the 2004 Annual Review of Psychology included a chapter on creativity by Runco. This review focud on the person, product, press, and process of creativity (Rhodes, 1961, 1987), disciplinary approaches (e.g., behavioral, biological, developmen-tal, and organizational), and other topical areas (e.g., implicit the
ories of cre-ativity, problem finding, and evolutionary approaches). Additional reviews D o w n l o a d e d B y : [B l e k i n g e I n s t i t u t e o f T e c h n o l o g y , I n f o c e n t e r ] A t : 12:01 16 F e b r u a r y 2011
Creativity in Organizations • 441
pertaining to creativity have also appeared in other journals (e.g., Anderson, De Dreu, & Nijstad, 2004; Egan, 2005; Rank, Pace, & Fre, 2004).The existence of the excellent, comprehensive, and relatively recent reviews of creativity theorizing and rearch affords me a certain luxury in this chapter. That is, it gives me the opportunity to focus in more depth on the most contemporary and perhaps especially intriguing new directions that creativity theorizing and rearch is taking. I will not review rearch that has already been reviewed elwhere (e.g., Runco, 2004; Shalley et al., 2004; Zhou & Shalley, 2003) unless it is particularly pertinent to t the stage for the theo-rizing and rearch on which I do focus. Work reviewed in this chapter was identified by both manual and electronic arches of the scholarly literature in management, organizational behavior, psychology, and related disciplines.The chapter unfolds as follows. After addressing definitional issues, I review contemporary theorizing and rearch relevant to creativity in organizations proceeding from the most molecular of approaches focud on internal pro-cess within individuals to the influence of c
ontextual factors to more molar approaches addressing creativity at a collective level within and across work groups. Even this very crude approach to organizing the review is inherently fuzzy, as will likely become clearer in the following ctions. That is, consistent with the tenets of interactionism (e.g., Carson, 1989; George, 1992; Kenrick & Funder, 1988; Pervin, 1985; Pervin & Lewis, 1978; Rowe, 1987), even the most internal and molecular of process occurs in a social and organizational con-text that cannot be ignored and interacts with the internal process to shape behavior. Analogously, when considering creativity at more molar levels such as the collective creativity that can take place in work groups, this creativity stems, in part, from internal process within individual group members in the context of their group membership and interactions. Thus, an ongoing dynamic interplay between more molecular and more molar influences on creativity will be a unifying thread throughout the chapter.
不可抗拒因素Creativity Defined: Charting the Domain
Creativity is typically defined as the generation or production of ideas that are both novel and uful (e.g., Amabile, 1988, 1996; Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Scott & Bruce, 1994). Thus, to be considered creative, ideas must be both new and en as having the potential to create value for organizations in the short or long run. Creativity is typically viewed as a key precursor to inno-vation
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(the successful implementation of creative ideas) and is increasingly being recognized as an important ingredient for effectiveness in all kinds of work and organizations (e.g., Amabile, 1988, 1996; George & Zhou, 2007; Old-ham & Cummings, 1996). Creative ideas can relate to work procedures, prod-ucts, rvices, and organizing structures and can vary in terms of the degree to which the idea reflects an incremental versus radical departure from the D o w n l o a d e d B y : [B l e k i n g e I n s t i t u t e o f T e c h n o l o g y , I n f o c e n t e r ] A t : 12:01 16 F e b r u a r y 2011
442 • The Academy of Management Annals
status quo (Mumford & Gustafson, 1988; Shalley et al., 2004). Creative ideas can also vary in terms of scope or the range of their value-creating potential. Thus, creativity occurs, for example, when a nur develops a novel approach to scheduling shifts in a hospital that alleviates recurring staff shortages while affording nurs more flexibility to deal with unforeen nonwork demands, when an administrative assistant develops a new electronic filing system, or when a rearch scientist develops a promising new drug. As vastly different as the examples of new and uful ideas are, they fall under the rubrics of creativity.Considering that both novelty and ufulness must be prent for ideas to be considered creative helps to distinguish what is creative from what is not creative. Outlandish, wild ideas can be creative but they are not necessarily so; they must also be en as bei
ng uful in an organization or having the poten-tial to create value to be considered creative. Novelty for novelty’s sake, there-fore, is not the same thing as creativity. Similarly, effective problem solving is certainly uful in organizations but does not necessarily reflect creativity; in order for problem solving to be creative, generated solutions must be novel. Thus, creativity is not the same thing as problem solving (Runco, 2004).Interestingly, theorizing and rearch on creativity tends to make the implicit assumption that the same causal factors will operate in a similar manner regardless of the type of creativity that occurs or that rearchers are studying, with some exceptions (e.g., Elsbach & Hargadon, 2006). Thus, as Shalley and colleagues (2004) noted, “In the extant literature, the concept of creativity is generally discusd as if it were a unitary construct” (p. 949). Recently, this implicit assumption was challenged. For example, Unsworth (2001) theorized that four types of creativity could be distinguished bad upon two dimensions: (a) whether initial engagement in idea generation is driven internally or externally, and (b) whether the task domain or problem type is open or clod. She theorized that causal determinants and underly-ing process contributing to creativity might differ depending upon the type of creativity under consideration. As another example, Elsbach and Harga-don suggested that one needs to take the nature of jobs and workdays into account in understanding factors that might promote or inhibit creativity. They theorized that, while increasing levels of autonomy and job complexity on relatively routine jobs with
鹅胆predictable workdays might facilitate intrinsic motivation and creativity, the creativity of professionals who are overworked, face numerous time pressures, and already have high level of job complexity on an ongoing basis might be facilitated by scheduling periods of relatively routine “mindless” work into their workdays.Think about the jobs and workdays of production workers, nurs, cre-taries, teachers, physicians, lawyers, college professors, stockbrokers, adver-tising executives, engineers, managers, and chefs. The potential for creativity resides in each of the jobs and for each of the types of jobholders. Will the D o w n l o a d e d B y : [B l e k i n g e I n s t i t u t e o f T e c h n o l o g y , I n f o c e n t e r ] A t : 12:01 16 F e b r u a r y 2011
