Creativity report

An investigation into strategies for increasing the creativity

of employees within large organisations

A research report presented in partial fulfilment of the

requirements of the degree of Masters in Management at Massey

University

Graeme Kiyoto-Ward

2012

Graeme Kiyoto-Ward Research Report

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Abstract

The purpose of this report is to identify strategies that leaders can employ to increase the

creativity of employees within large organisations. This report uses creativity literature

published since 2006 in order to identify what new information it can reveal about this topic.

Three major areas were found that leaders could use to positively influence creativity. The

first of these are factors that affect individual employees and includes intrinsic motivation,

autonomy, role identity, and psychological empowerment. Secondly social factors were also

identified as being important and these included the team environment, the degree to which

employees shared knowledge, and the nature of employees’ social networks. The third of

these areas found to be an influence on creativity is management styles and behaviours.

These factors are combined into a framework that illustrates the key strategies for

influencing creativity. What is also apparent as a result of this research is that many of the

influencers of creativity are positive human factors that support or empower employees.

This research also identifies that creativity has a higher reliance on social interactions and

social environments than was initially expected. This report outlines some areas for further

study. Some of this further study is the result of limitations found in the literature but some

proposed areas of further study are specific new areas identified during the course of this

research. Finally, this report calls for further research to produce a simpler model that is

easier for leaders to deploy in their organisations.


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Table of Contents

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1

1.1. Background ...................................................................................................................... 1

1.1.1. Innovation and Creativity ....................................................................................... 1

1.1.2. Definition of Creativity ........................................................................................... 2

1.1.3. Scope of this Research ............................................................................................. 3

1.2. Research Objective .......................................................................................................... 5

1.3. Report Structure .............................................................................................................. 5

1.4. Method ............................................................................................................................. 6

2. Literature Review ................................................................................................................... 8

2.1. Seminal Literature and Variables for Research ............................................................. 8

2.2. Individual Factors ......................................................................................................... 10

2.2.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 10

2.2.2. Intrinsic Motivation ............................................................................................... 10

2.2.3. Task Autonomy ..................................................................................................... 11

2.2.4. Role Identity ........................................................................................................... 13

2.2.5. Psychological Empowerment ............................................................................... 14

2.2.6. Other Individual Factors ....................................................................................... 15

2.3. Social Factors ................................................................................................................. 16

2.3.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 16

2.3.2. Social Networks ..................................................................................................... 16

2.3.3. Knowledge Sharing ............................................................................................... 18

2.3.4. Social Environment ............................................................................................... 20

2.4. Leadership Factors ........................................................................................................ 22

2.4.1. Introduction ........................................................................................................... 22

2.4.2. Leader Member Relationships .............................................................................. 22

2.4.3. Leadership Styles ................................................................................................... 25

2.4.4. Leader’s Decisions ................................................................................................. 28

3. Discussion ............................................................................................................................. 31

3.1. Framework of Strategies ............................................................................................... 31

3.2. The Importance of Positive Human Factors ................................................................ 34

3.3. The Importance of Social Factors ................................................................................. 34

3.4. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 35

4. Recommendations for Further Research ............................................................................ 36

4.1. Causality and Generalizability ..................................................................................... 36

4.2. Specific Areas of Further Research .............................................................................. 37

4.3. Simplified Frameworks................................................................................................. 38

5. References ............................................................................................................................. 41

6. Appendices ........................................................................................................................... 50

6.1. Journals Included in Initial Literature Search ............................................................. 50


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1. Introduction

1.1. Background

1.1.1. Innovation and Creativity

Rapid changes in society and technology have created turbulent environments that require

organisations to be able to adjust and adapt quickly. These changes in the environment are

both rapid and unexpected, requiring swift responses and changes in direction by

businesses. This has created an intense and on-going interest in creativity and innovation

within general and business literature (Barton, 2012; Gluckman, 2012; NZ slow to invest in

creativity, 2012; Robinson, 2010). A sample of some of the wide ranging changes in the

environment that organisations have faced over the past decade are new and changing

markets (Atsmon, Child, Dobbs, & Narasimhan, 2012; Economist, 2011), changing

demographics (Cumming, 2011), the impact of social media on corporate communications

(Waters, Tindall, & Morton, 2010), and increasing prevalence of personal electronics such as

smart phones (Doi, Howell, & Hirakawa, 2012). Because of this rapidly changing

environment, creativity and innovation are often viewed as required capabilities within

modern organisations to meet these challenges (Barsh, Capozzi, & Davidson, 2008; DiLiello

& Houghton, 2008; Kanter, 2010). As another potential benefit for leaders, higher levels of

creativity have also been credited with higher performance from employees (Gong, Huang,

& Farh, 2009).

Within academic research, creativity and innovation are viewed as related ideas with a

slightly different focus and each has its own research traditions and seminal literature. In

order to understand creativity in context, it is important to understand the nature of

innovation. Innovation is focused on outputs and is generally viewed as the implementation

of new ideas (Martins & Terblanche, 2003). The background and literature for innovation

has a basis in marketing and the seminal works by Crawford (1987) and Cooper (2001) focus


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on the product development aspects of marketing. Features specific to innovation include

generating an outcome that provides benefits (Crossan & Apaydin, 2010), and a process that

leads to some change (Baregheh, Rowley, & Sambrook, 2009). These definitions help to

define innovation’s role in organisations. Perhaps the best summary is that provided by Zien

and Buckler who define innovation as “the whole spectrum of activities, from dreams to

market introduction to maintenance” (1997, p. 276). Creativity exists at the dreams end of

the innovation process and creativity can be considered a process within innovation

(Damanpour & Aravind, 2011). To illustrate both the difference and the relationship

between creativity and innovation, an example of a creative idea is that people can build and

maintain a network of friends or acquaintances online, some examples of innovation are

Facebook or LinkedIn.

1.1.2. Definition of Creativity

The creativity-innovation dyad is a view that predominates in the study of organisations

and business but much of the early work on creativity came from the field of psychology.

This early research was directed at creativity within individuals through investigation of

traits of creative people or research into individuals working in creative fields such as artists

and scientists (Shalley & Zhou, 2008). The focus of this report is management and as such

will not investigate the psychology-centric field of creativity though it is important for the

reader to understand that the total field of research into creativity is wider than is covered

by this paper.

The definition of creativity is not straightforward particularly when trying to identify what

to include within the scope of this report. Research on creativity within organisational

settings started to develop in the 1980s when researchers such as Amabile and

Czikszentmihalyi started to investigate the influence of the environment on individuals’

creativity (Shalley & Zhou, 2008). A common theme for defining creativity that stretches


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back to this period is the generation of ideas with particular attributes such as novelty or

originality (Runco & Jaeger, 2012). Other researchers have proposed additional attributes

that will be excluded for the purpose of this study, for example the attributes of ideas being

‘put to use’ (Prabhu, Sutton, & Sauser, 2008) or generating surprise (Runco & Jaeger, 2012).

Surprise is difficult variable to operationalize and rarely appears in the literature and this

report views ideas being put into use as being part of innovation. Rather than expecting

ideas to be put to use, the definition of creativity for the purposes of this research will only

require that ideas be useable (Amabile, 1996; Martins & Terblanche, 2003). In summary,

creativity occurs when an idea has been created that could be used, whether or not it is used

– this allows the definition to exclude ideas that have no value. This is a commonly held

view as Amabile’s definition of creativity is the most widely adopted and most frequently

cited in the period since 2006 (Gutnick, Walter, Nijstad, & De Dreu, 2012; Rego, Machado,

Leal, & Cunha, 2009; Sun, Zhang, Qi, & Chen, 2012; A. Zhang, Tsui, & Wang, 2011; X. Zhang

& Bartol, 2010; Zhou, Shin, & Cannella, 2008). This report therefore employs this definition

in that “creativity is the production of novel and useful ideas in any domain” (Amabile,

1996, p. 396).

1.1.3. Scope of this Research

This study will focus on creativity within large organisations. A number of studies have

found that large organisations innovate more effectively than smaller organisations

(Camisón-Zornoza, Lapiedra-Alcamí, Segarra-Ciprés, & Boronat-Navarro, 2004;

Damanpour, 1992; Haveman, 1993) either as result of having additional resources

(Haveman, 1993) or better ability to absorb losses as a result of failed attempts at innovation

(Camisón-Zornoza et al., 2004). The advantage that large organisations have for innovation

appears to be in the area of implementation of ideas rather than the creation of those ideas

(Damanpour, 1992). If large organisations have strengths in the implementation of

innovations, then understanding how to make these organisations better generators of ideas


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is of value to leaders of these organisations. This makes understanding how to raise

creativity within large organisations a worthy area of study.

Defining large organisations for a creativity study is difficult. Although definitions of small

and medium enterprises – and by exclusion, large organisations – exist, most definitions are

based on number of employees (Ayyagari, Beck, & Demirguc-Kunt, 2007). This study has

avoided using this definition as a review of creativity literature found few examples where

the number of employees was included as an operationalized variable but many cases where

team attributes were operationalized as variables. This report requires that an organisation

be large enough to have specific teams undertaking specific functions to qualify as a large

organisation. Teams, in this report, are defined as a group of employees engaged on some

common task. Creativity within teams is of interest to managers as it has been found that

raising the creativity of employees within a team can improve the financial performance of

that team (Sung & Choi, 2012).

A second implication of basing the scope of this study around large organisations is the

existence of a management structure. The leaders within these structures are the means for

communicating and coordinating changes across the organisation. If the organisation is

looking to undertake an initiative to change or improve in some way, the actions or

inactions of the leaders are important to the success of that initiative. This report assumes

that creativity exists within organisations and that the right initiatives or strategies can

convert this potential creativity into expressed ideas (Xu & Rickards, 2007). This study

therefore looks for strategies that leaders within an organisation can use to enhance the

levels of creative output from teams and individuals within that organisation. As a result

this report will not examine factors that are difficult for managers to influence such as the

personality traits of employees.


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The scope of this report is creativity literature published from 2006 onwards. This period is

of interest because of the growth of creativity research appearing from across the globe with

a rise in research published articles from as far afield as Israel, China, Taiwan, Romania,

Turkey as well as Europe and the United States. This period was also selected to provide

five full years of research and to determine whether a framework extracted from this period

would provide any new insights. Selecting a recent cut-off date provides some distance from

earlier frameworks and will provide a valuable insight into how recent research into

creativity may differ from older seminal works.

1.2. Research Objective

This report aims to identify strategies that are available to leaders in large organisations who

may be looking to increase the creative output of their employees. The specific question that

this research will answer is:

“What does the literature from 2006 identify as key strategies that leaders in large

organisations can use to raise the creativity of employees”

1.3. Report Structure

This report will consist of several sections starting with a literature review. This literature

review will start with a brief overview of seminal articles to provide a view of what has

come before and to identify existing frameworks. The second part of the literature review

will be in three parts. The first of these will examine factors that influence creativity at an

individual level followed by a section that investigates social influencers of creativity before

finally reviewing the role of leaders. The final sections of this report will draw conclusions

from this review to develop a framework of strategies available for leaders, before proposing

areas for further study.


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1.4. Method

The first step undertaken for the literature review was a search through key journals

containing articles related to creativity in the period of interest. The initial set of journals

were those identified by James and Drown (2011) in their review of creativity. All these

journals were searched with the exception of Organizational Science which could not be

accessed from the Massey Library – the full list of initial journals is listed in Appendix One.

The title and abstract of each article published since January 2006 was checked and assessed

for its suitability to be included in this research. This activity was undertaken to ensure that

articles not directly related to the topic could be eliminated such as those on education,

children, creative arts, or those specifically focused on innovation. This provided a list of 90

articles.

An additional search both checked the completeness of this list and supplemented it by

finding additional articles. This additional search was undertaken using the databases

Business Source Complete and Web of Knowledge where articles were searched for by topic. The

search terms used were ‘creativity’ in the title along with ‘manager’ OR ‘leader’ and ‘team’

OR ‘organization’ OR ‘employee’ in any fields with a search period starting January 2006.

Additional filters were applied to reduce the article set to those scholarly articles, in English,

where the full text was available in the academic areas of business studies or social science.

The resulting search identified another 24 articles coming from journals outside the core set

listed above. During the course of the literature review, one article by Hunter, Bedell &

Mumford (2007) identified the Journal of Creative Behaviour and R&D Management as

additional journals of interest and a search of these generated an additional seven articles.


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This final set of articles were then reviewed and further sorted into two sets. The first set of

articles is those involving primary research using qualitative methods. This group consists

of surveys and experiments that test hypotheses and totalled 60 articles. These provide the

basis for this research as these identify and test factors that that can influence employee

creativity. The remaining articles were reviewed to identify those that could support this

research or provide context. Not all articles were found to be relevant and therefore some

have not been included in this report.


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2. Literature Review

2.1. Seminal Literature and Variables for Research

The articles identified through the search of the literature were reviewed for themes and

many articles were found to reference two seminal frameworks for explaining creativity in

organisations. These are the componential model of organisational creativity from Amabile

(1996) and the interactionist model of organisational creativity proposed by Woodman,

Sawyer and Griffin (1993). These provide a reference point for understanding creativity

within organisations and are described in brief.

The componential model proposes that creativity is the result of a combined set of

individual and organisational factors. The individual factors within the model are creative

thinking skills, individual expertise, and motivation. Creative thinking skills are the

techniques that individuals can employ to think creativity such as looking at problems from

different perspectives or using brainstorming sessions. Individual expertise consists of the

collective knowledge that an individual has in a given area. Motivation represents the

drivers that encourage employees to be creative. It is this motivation that Amabile views as

the most important of the three components for managers because it is the easiest of the

factors for managers to influence (Amabile, 1996). The organisational factors are

organisational motivation to innovate, resources and management practices. These are

broad headings within which there are a number of elements many of which were

recognisable as variables of study in subsequent literature. As an example, within

management practices, such elements as autonomy, leaders’ support for creativity, and clear

goals appear in both the componential model and the creativity research in the period under

review. Perhaps the most important contribution of this model is recognition that factors

outside the individual affect their creativity.


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The interactionist model proposes that the organisational creativity is based on the

interactions between three layers within an organisation, these layers being individuals,

groups (or teams) and the overall organisation. The model then identifies that the interaction

between these layers generates creative behaviours in employees and a creative situation.

This creative situation consists of a set of creativity enhancers and constraints such as

whether the social environment is accepting of new ideas and the degree to which leaders

support creativity. It is the interaction between the creative behaviours and situation that

determines the creative output of the organisation (Woodman et al., 1993). Like the

componential model, the interactionist model identifies characteristics within each of the

main layers that determine how these influence individual creativity. At an individual level,

many of these characteristics are recognisable within the componential model, for example

cognitive ability closely matches creativity thinking skills, knowledge aligns with expertise,

and both include intrinsic motivation. The match is initially less immediately apparent at the

group or organisational level though detailed analysis reveals many of the same

characteristics appear as both models recognise reward, resources, and leadership style as

influencers of creativity. The key contribution of the interactionist model is to clearly

separate out the items that affect creativity into a series of layers, an approach that this

report employs.

What these seminal models both provide is a framework that identifies the importance of

factors outside the individual influences their creativity. These frameworks provided the

base categories that were used when reviewing the literature when preparing this report.

The componential model supplied the concept of management practices, which for the

purposes of this research has been classified as leadership factors. The interactionist model

provided group and organisational factors. Both recognised that factors exist at the

individual level. The review of the literature since 2006 modified these overarching

categories. Organisational factors were eliminated as a category as items were found to fit


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within other categories or be unique to individual studies and therefore difficult to draw

conclusions from. Group factors were modified to become the category that contained social

factors as this was a better fit with the information found in the literature. The category

containing individual factors was retained due to the amount of information gained from

the literature. The final categories that are employed by this report to categorise influencers

of creativity are individual factors, social factors and leadership factors.

2.2. Individual Factors

2.2.1. Introduction

For the purposes of this research, individual factors are those factors that uniquely affect

each individual employee’s ability or willingness to be creative. Individual factors are

represented in 49 of the 60 studies, a high frequency which reflects the highly individual

nature of creativity. The high count of studies examining individual factors is in part due to

the frequency with which individual creativity is used as the dependent variable of study –

appearing in 42 instances. This section of the report examines intrinsic motivation, role

autonomy, job role, and psychological empowerment before commenting on other

individual factors.

2.2.2. Intrinsic Motivation

Employee motivation to be creative is included in the componential model as one of the

three main individual factors influencing creativity and so it is not surprising that it appears

in the recent literature. The componential model defines two types of motivation, intrinsic

and extrinsic (Amabile & Mueller, 2008). Intrinsic motivation is the motivation that a person

derives from a task based on an inherent interest in a task or the enjoyment obtained from

performing the task (Prabhu et al., 2008). Where an employee is intrinsically motivated, the

rewards are entirely internal to the person performing the task and may not be obvious to


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outside observers (Coelho, Augusto, & Lages, 2011). For example, an employee may have an

interest in a particular task and be motivated by what they learn from doing the task – the

motivation may be high but the motivation invisible to an outside observer. Extrinsic

motivation (the application of rewards from external parties (Cooper & Jayatilaka, 2006))

and obligation motivation (an employee’s feelings of reciprocity towards a manager (Cooper

& Jayatilaka, 2006)) will be examined later under leader-member relationships. Of the types

of motivation identified, intrinsic motivation is accepted as having the strongest influence on

creativity (X. Zhang & Bartol, 2010).

There have been a number of studies within the period covered by this research and these

have almost all reconfirmed the positive link between intrinsic motivation and creativity

(Coelho et al., 2011; Cooper & Jayatilaka, 2006; X. Zhang & Bartol, 2010). The one study that

did not fully confirm the link found that in one test of three (an experiment) the link

between intrinsic motivation and creativity approached but did not exceed the statistical

significance threshold required by the study (Eisenberger & Aselage, 2009). Despite this

single outlier, this report concludes that intrinsic motivation positively influences creativity.

However, because intrinsic motivation is something that is internal and unique to individual

employees and is difficult to observe, understanding that it influences creativity is not

enough. Leaders need to understand what factors may affect an employee’s intrinsic

motivation and therefore their creativity.

2.2.3. Task Autonomy

Since intrinsic motivation represents an employee’s interest in a task, making changes to the

task will affect the employee’s intrinsic motivation. The nature of the task is therefore a

mechanism that leaders can use to affect intrinsic motivation. Task autonomy is one task

characteristic that research has proved has a positive influence on intrinsic motivation. as

employees are more intrinsically motivated by work that they initiate and manage


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themselves or when working in teams that are supportive of autonomy (Eisenberger &

Aselage, 2009; Liu, Chen, & Yao, 2011). This positive link between autonomy and intrinsic

motivation exists in part because it allows employees to perform tasks in ways that more

suit their personal preferences (Mathisen, 2011). In addition, employees who have more

autonomy feel greater responsibility for their roles (Volmer, Spurk, & Niessen, 2012) which

in turn gives the employee a greater feeling that the task has meaning, something which also

positively influences intrinsic motivation (X. Zhang & Bartol, 2010). Providing job

autonomy is recommended as one way of improving intrinsic motivation and the resulting

creative output from employees but represents only one job characteristic of many (Coelho

& Augusto, 2010; Tsaur, Yen, & Yang, 2011).

Autonomy has potential limits to how much it can positively influence creativity. There is

the risk that providing autonomy removes an inhibitor to intrinsic motivation rather than

generating an increase in employee’s intrinsic motivation. Lack of autonomy decreases

intrinsic motivation as it limits the options that employees have to complete tasks (Volmer et

al., 2012). Because many of the surveys undertaken in the period are point-in-time, causality

is a frequently cited research limitation meaning that the direction of the relationship is not

confirmed (Coelho et al., 2011; Mathisen, 2011). If the effect of autonomy on intrinsic

motivation is due to removing an inhibitor then there will be limits to how much autonomy

can increase intrinsic motivation and therefore creativity. This is because once the inhibiting

factors are fully removed then providing further autonomy will not promote more

creativity. This argument can be supported by looking at the effect that ambiguity has on

intrinsic motivation. Autonomy represents freedom for the employee and ambiguity

represents more extreme autonomy as it is freedom without direction. Ambiguity is

detrimental to both intrinsic motivation and creativity as employees are unable to

understand the required standards they need to meet, or even the scope of their assignment

(Coelho et al., 2011). The uncertainty and stress caused by this means employees are unable


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to fully engage with their work affecting their intrinsic motivation (Binyamin & Carmeli,

2010). This indicates a potential curvilinear relationship between autonomy and intrinsic

motivation and therefore creativity, and assumes there is an optimal level of autonomy. This

is something that has not been tested in creativity research though a curvilinear relationship

has been proved between autonomy and innovation (Gebert, Boerner, & Lanwehr, 2003). As

mentioned, innovation and creativity are different concepts but they are related enough that

a proved curvilinear relationship between autonomy and innovation should indicate further

research is required to confirm whether the same relationship exists between autonomy and

creativity.

2.2.4. Role Identity

Assigning employees into roles that have a creative identity is another mechanism available

to leaders looking to increase creative output. Role identity describes the situation in which

an employee in a given role acts in accordance with the expectations of that role to fulfil

social and personal expectations (A. Wang & Cheng, 2010). Placing employees into roles that

have a creative expectation increase both an employee’s self-expectations for creativity and

creative output (Carmeli & Schaubroeck, 2007; Farmer, Tierney, & Kung-McIntyre, 2003).

This approach is similar to job autonomy in that it reflects matching individual employees to

a specific role to enhance creative behaviours.

There are two views to how creative role identity operates, one of these being through the

expectations of the leaders, the other through the nature of the role. The simplest

explanation is that when leaders assign a person to a creative role this sets a creative

expectation. This is known as the Pygmalion effect which is assumes that if “one expects

more one gets more” (Carmeli & Schaubroeck, 2007, p. 37). There may be more than an

assumption of creativity however, as the process of assigning a person to a role may

influence the degree to which the leader is showing support for creativity or prepared to


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accept risk. If the leader creates the perception that risk will be more tolerated then this can

encourage increased creativity. An employee’ willingness to take risks has been found to

positively influence their creativity (Dewett, 2006) and the desire to avoid risk detrimental to

creativity (Hirst, Van Knippenberg, Chen, & Sacramento, 2011). The alternative view is that

it is the requirements of the role that influences employee creativity. Those tasks that have a

higher expectation of creativity are those that may be less routine, less structured, and more

challenging (Mathisen, 2011).

These two views are not mutually exclusive however and it is likely that context plays a part

in which of these factors is most significant in a given situation. The research within the

scope of this project does not provide sufficient evidence to explain this in further detail.

What is clear however is that there are a number of ways that role identity can influence

creativity of the person assigned to a role and therefore provides a way for leaders to

increase the creativity of employees.

2.2.5. Psychological Empowerment

Studies into psychological empowerment provide further information about factors that are

important to employees and that can enhance creativity. Psychological empowerment is

defined as a combination of four elements, competence, task meaning, task significance and

self-determination (Sun et al., 2012). As a collective factor this has been found to promote

creativity (Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009). Self-determination has already been addressed

under the topic of autonomy so will not be examined further in this section. This section will

focus on task meaning and task significance. There is insufficient coverage of competence

within the literature published since 2006 to draw any conclusions therefore it will not be

covered by this report. The research into task meaning and task significance is less extensive

than for other factors previously covered such as autonomy or role identity but enough

information exists to identify a positive influence on creativity.


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Meaningfulness of a task is when an employee perceives the work “to be purposeful,

engaging and significant” (Cohen-Meitar, Carmeli, & Waldman, 2009, p. 361) and has been

found to positively influence both intrinsic motivation (X. Zhang & Bartol, 2010) and

creativity (Cohen-Meitar et al., 2009). Task significance is the extent to which a role is able to

make a discernible difference to either the organisation or others within it (Coelho &

Augusto, 2010). When examined as an independent variable the relationship between task

significance and creativity was not supported in one study (Coelho & Augusto, 2010) but

was partially supported in another (Tsaur et al., 2011). Those roles in which the significance

was high and feedback from performing those roles was clear tended to be more creative. In

the case of the study by Tsaur et al (2011), tour operators who travelled with customers, had

a major impact on their experience, and would be on hand to receive immediate feedback

from their decisions, tended to exhibit higher creativity.

Tasks perceived by employees to be engaging and significant to the employees performing

them promote creative responses. In contrast tasks perceived to be of significance to the

organisation have the potential to influence creativity though more research is

recommended to further clarify the conditions under which task significance and creativity

are linked. Increasing psychological empowerment in general provides an additional

strategy for encouraging creative outputs from employees as well as having a positive effect

on intrinsic motivation (X. Zhang & Bartol, 2010).

2.2.6. Other Individual Factors

The literature since 2006 has covered a broad range of individual factors and not all of these

are included in this report due to space constraints. One reason for excluding items from this

report is because the factors have been deemed too specific to individuals and therefore

difficult for leaders to influence. Examples of such these include extraversion, neuroticism,


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conscientiousness, and openness to experience each of which has potential impact on

creativity (Baer, Oldham, Jacobsohn, & Hollingshead, 2008; Schilpzand, Herold, & Shalley,

2011; Y. Yang & Wang, 2010). The second reason for excluding some individual factors is

they are highly specific and confined to individual studies and therefore there is not the

body of research to provide significant confirmation that these should be considered a key

strategy for increasing creativity. Examples of these are need for power (Hon & Leung, 2011)

and polychromic tendencies – a person’s inclination to multitask (Chong & Ma, 2010).

Although not examined directly in this report, it is important for leaders to understand that

there are a wide range of additional factors that exist as traits and behaviours within

individual employees that have the capability to influence creativity. This is an indicator of

the complex nature of understanding how to influence creativity.

2.3. Social Factors

2.3.1. Introduction

One source of creativity is the combining of ideas from different people. Creativity therefore

is as much about the mixing of ideas as the generation of completely new ideas (Hargadon,

2008). This coming together of ideas underpins the social aspects of creativity through

people’s access to different ideas, willingness to share these ideas, and support for creativity.

For the purposes of this paper, social factors encompass those influencers on creativity that

stem from the social environment or social interactions between employees.

2.3.2. Social Networks

Social network are personal contacts that each individual has both within and outside the

organisation. There are a number of dimensions that define social networks – these

dimensions are the strength of the ties in the network, the number of ties, and the diversity

of the network (Baer, 2010). Network strength indicates the closeness of the two individuals


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who form each branch of the network, stronger ties indicating more frequent contact and

higher levels of caring or concern between the individuals (Perry-Smith & Shalley, 2003).

The strength of ties is important to creativity researchers because individuals with strong

ties are assumed to be individuals who form part of the same social circle whereas weak ties

are more likely to represent acquaintances that have less in common. The importance of

weak ties for creativity is because they “may provide more novel, diverse, and non-

redundant information” (Zhou, Shin, Brass, Choi, & Zhang, 2009, p. 1545). The number of

ties represents the number of people an individual has access to. Diversity of ties provides

access to different information from different groups providing access to a range of

knowledge. Diversity of ties is important as large number of ties to a small number of

groups may not provide the amount of new information required to promote creativity

(Baer, 2010).

Having network ties outside a project team has been found to increase the creativity (Chen,

Chang, & Hung, 2008) though weak ties would seem to be more important as strong tie

networks outside a team do not appear to have a significant impact on creativity either

negatively (Zhou et al., 2009) or positively (Chen, 2009). Detailed examination of networks

looking at the combination of the dimensions or network size, strength and diversity, has

confirmed the size of the weak tie network increases creativity (Zhou et al., 2009). This

increase in creativity is not linear as is there is a limit of around 150 connections that a

person can meaningfully maintain (Hill & Dunbar, 2003). After this point, meaningful

information exchange becomes limited and therefore creative output decreases (Zhou et al.,

2009).

The fact that network size and diversity both influence employee creativity has important

considerations for leaders as they need to find ways for employees to create and maintain

these networks. This explains why some companies create joint meeting spaces within their


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organisations to encourage the mingling of people. Leaders are also encouraged to ensure

that the social side of work is not forgotten, whether this be through informal activities such

as team sports (Zhou et al., 2009) or formal activities such as training programmes or

conferences (Baer, 2010).

2.3.3. Knowledge Sharing

Research into social networks examines the potential pool of knowledge available to an

employee through the reach of an employee’s connections (network size), and the

accessibility of those connections (network strength) but those studies have not examined

the degree to which knowledge sharing actually occurs within those networks. The degree

to which the sharing of knowledge influences creativity has been the focus of a number of

separate studies.

Both the componential and interactionist models from the seminal literature identify the

importance of knowledge in the creative process. Therefore it would be expected that the

sharing of knowledge would have a direct and positive effect on creativity. This assumption

is not fully supported in the literature since 2006 however. One study in the period has

indeed concluded that there is a direct link between knowledge sharing and increased

creativity (Schepers & Berg, 2007). A second study tested the direct link between knowledge

sharing and employee creativity and found that this did not exist. This second study instead

found that knowledge sharing influenced creativity through a mediating variable of trust

(Gong, Cheung, Wang, & Huang, 2012). Further studies have identified that knowledge

sharing operates by mediating between a variety of other mediating factors such as the

psychological safety (Kessel, Kratzer, & Schultz, 2012) or various leadership styles (Sung &

Choi, 2012; A. Zhang et al., 2011). The link between knowledge sharing is positive but

indirect.


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In order to understand why there is an apparent indirect link between something as

fundamental as knowledge sharing and creativity requires an understanding of the potential

social costs of sharing knowledge. For employees there is a dilemma when sharing

knowledge as this may provide a benefit to the group but come at a perceived cost to the

individual. This perceived cost can be high particularly if the employee views the

knowledge as a scarce resource and something that could provide them benefits such as

increased status or security (Gagné, 2009; A. Zhang et al., 2011). This would explain the

three-way link between trust, knowledge sharing and creativity found by Gong et al. (2012)

as trust creates an environment in which lowers the perceived cost of sharing knowledge.

The explanation of the link between transformational leadership, knowledge sharing and

creativity is very similar. Transformational leadership encourages employees to focus on

“collective outcomes” (Shin & Zhou, 2007, p. 1710) therefore increasing the perceived

benefits in sharing knowledge compared with the perceived cost. In a manner similar to

trust, transformational leadership reduces the effect of the knowledge sharing dilemma and

has been found to increase creativity by increasing the sharing of knowledge (A. Zhang et

al., 2011).

There is also a link between psychological safety and increased knowledge sharing in a way

that that supports increased creativity. Psychological safety represents the “shared belief

that team members are safe to speak up” (Huang & Jiang, 2012, p. 175). This safety creates

environments where knowledge sharing can occur more freely and it has been observed that

it increases creative performance (Kessel et al., 2012). This starts to indicate the effect that the

team environment can have on creativity, something that will be covered in the next section.

Improved knowledge sharing as a strategy for improving creativity though this strategy

cannot be deployed in isolation. There are important links between knowledge sharing and


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social networks as the source of new ideas and also between knowledge sharing and social

environments as potential inhibitors of expression of these ideas.

2.3.4. Social Environment

The environment within a team is an important contributor to knowledge sharing but also

affects the creative efficacy within the team (Schepers & Berg, 2007). Teams create social

environments that define how members relate to each other and the literature identifies this

as team-member exchange (TMX) (Munoz-Doyague & Nieto, 2012). These intra-team

relationships have been found to positively influence creativity within the team (Barczak,

Lassk, & Mulki, 2010; Chen et al., 2008; Munoz-Doyague & Nieto, 2012). This is because it

increases the willingness of members of the team to assist each other, share ideas and

provide feedback (Coelho et al., 2011; Munoz-Doyague & Nieto, 2012). The willingness of

one party to provide feedback however does not necessarily translate into a willingness of

another to receive it. Feedback requires an environment of trust to be effective and this

environment of trust is important as the generation of creative ideas does carry risk. Novel

ideas are not always accepted or successful and can carry a perceived career or esteem risk

for employees (Kark & Carmeli, 2009) nor are they always welcomed (Mueller, Melwani, &

Goncalo, 2011).

The treatment of risk represents another social factor that can impact creativity within an

organisation as employees who are willing to take risks are more creative (Dewett, 2006) and

employees who tend to avoid risk are less creative (Hirst et al., 2011). To be creative,

employees need to work in a social environment that provides a sense of psychological

safety where they can provide ideas to the group without fear of negative consequences

(Palanski & Vogelgesang, 2011). A sense of psychological safety can be developed through

clear expectations and procedures that provide members of a team with a common


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understanding of what is accepted and expected. This reduces ambiguity which is

detrimental to both intrinsic motivation and creativity (Coelho et al., 2011).

The findings that team relationships improve creativity and that risk reduces creativity have

not been universally supported. One study found a negative relationship between co-worker

relationships and creativity. The authors speculated that this surprising finding could

represent employees avoiding novel ideas in order to maintain relationships with co-

workers (Coelho et al., 2011). Another study examining the relationship between risk and

creativity revealed that people will exhibit more creativity when working in an environment

where the consequences of failure to generate innovative ideas are higher, an apparently

positive response to increased risk (Simmons & Ren, 2009). This study differed from others

studies however in that it examined situations in which reduced creativity itself was

perceived to increase risk, whereas the remaining studies were examining the risk from the

acceptance of ideas. These two studies suggest that creativity is the result of multiple factors

and the complex interactions between these factors means that studies may generate

apparently inconsistent results depending on the nature of the workplace being studied or

how the research is defined.

The environment within a team is an important factor that affects the creativity of

individuals but the relationship between the social environment and creativity is a complex

one. At the simplest level, the nature of interactions between team members, the degree of

risk acceptance, and the levels of trust do empower individuals to be more creative (Chong

& Ma, 2010) but has been seen further factors such as risk and the degree of knowledge

sharing are also important considerations. For leaders, the social environment becomes

another factor to consider in the search for creativity.


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2.4. Leadership Factors

2.4.1. Introduction

The actions of leaders have a significant impact on the lives of employees within an

organisation and this impact extends to employee creativity. This section examines

leadership factors to identify how the relationship, behaviours, and decisions of leaders

affect employee creativity. It is important to note that even though they will be treated

individually these leadership factors are strongly interrelated. A leader’s style will influence

their relationships with the team, and a leader’s relationships with employees can affect

their decisions.

2.4.2. Leader Member Relationships

The most prevalent factor found in the literature examines the relationship between the

leader and employees – commonly referred to as leader-member exchange (LMX). LMX is

defined as the quality of the interpersonal relationships between a leader and individual

employees (Munoz-Doyague & Nieto, 2012). Relationships between leaders and individual

staff develop as a result of interactions over time and these relationships are two-way – the

actions of both the leader and the employee contribute to the relationship (Volmer et al.,

2012). Although a two-way relationship, LMX has been included in the section looking at

leadership factors as the leader has more power than the employee in the relationship, and

because the employees within a team have individual exchange relationships with the same

leader.

The influence of LMX relationships is well studied and the research since 2006 has identified

that high quality LMX relationships have a positive influence on the creativity of individuals

within a team (Mathisen, 2011; Munoz-Doyague & Nieto, 2012; Volmer et al., 2012). LMX is a

broad concept covering such elements as mutual trust, support, autonomy and the latitude

to make decisions (Mathisen, 2011; Munoz-Doyague & Nieto, 2012), many of which also


Page 23

operate at the individual level. As leadership factors, these stem from the relationship rather

than from the role that a person has been assigned. Understanding which of these elements

within the exchange relationship influences creativity is of importance to leaders.

Furthermore, some research prior to the 2006 did not consistently support the link between

LMX and creativity, suggesting the influence of other variables (Volmer et al., 2012).

One element of a high quality LMX relationship is the development of trust between the

leader and the employee. This trust creates an environment in which the leader feels safe to

increase employee autonomy through delegation of authority. Leaders are more willing to

provide challenging and autonomous assignments to employees who are expected to

perform reliably and work in the best interests of the leader (K. Wang & Casimir, 2007). For

employees, the improved communication that this trust provides can give employees a

better understanding of how a leader operates and what they are trying to achieve

(Mathisen, 2011). This suggests a relationship between LMX and autonomy that supports

creativity, something that has been confirmed by research (Mathisen, 2011; Volmer et al.,

2012). This relationship starts to uncover some of the complexity of organisational creativity

as the apparently task related element of autonomy is linked in part at least to the

relationship between a leader and the employee. Trust appears to be important not just

within a group as discussed earlier but between individuals and their leaders as well.

An aspect related to trust is the extent to which the relationship establishes expectations and

obligations of creativity. As has been explained, the creative expectations from a role

encourage creativity from individuals in those roles. Of all the stakeholders that can set

these expectations, the expectations of an employee’s leader has the strongest influence

(Carmeli & Schaubroeck, 2007). Cooper and Jayatilaka (2006) examined the role of obligation

motivation which is a form of social motivation that extends from a need to reciprocate

benefits received. They believed that because obligation motivation was the result of


Page 24

motivation from an external party, it would operate in a manner similar to extrinsic

motivation and would be detrimental to creativity. The relationship was found to be the

opposite of what they proposed in that obligation motivation was found to increase

creativity. Cooper and Jayatilaka appear to be the first to examine the effect of obligation

motivation on creativity but other research has linked obligation to higher levels of

employee commitment, and performance (Eisenberger, Armeli, Rexwinkel, Lynch, &

Rhoades, 2001) making the effect of obligation motivation an area deserving of further

study. Although more research may be required to confirm the specific mechanism,

obligations and expectations provide another potential influence on creativity for leaders to

be aware of.

Other factors related to LMX have received attention. An example of this is that a leader’s

emotional intelligence is linked to increased employee creativity and a high quality LMX

relationship increases an employee’s feelings of creative energy (Atwater & Carmeli, 2009;

Castro, Gomes, & de Sousa, 2012). Although not specifically tested in research between 2006

and 2012, there is the likelihood that other factors operate to modify the link between LMX

and creativity as employees in high LMX relationships may receive better quality feedback

(Mathisen, 2011; Volmer et al., 2012). In conclusion, while LMX enhances creativity through

trust, autonomy, obligations and expectations, but there is scope for further study.

LMX explains the impact between an immediate leader and the immediate members of the

team but does not explain the wider impact of relationships with management beyond the

team. The influence of leaders can extend beyond immediate management, for example

project teams whose members have relationships with upper management are more creative

(Chen, 2009). This is an area deserving of further study to determine how far the relationship

between a leader and employee can extend. There is research that specifically examines the

impact of the bypass effect (the influence of the relationship of non-immediate managers on


Page 25

employees) on employee performance (J. Yang, Zhang, & Tsui, 2010). There is not the same

research specifically examining the influence of the bypass effect on creativity although

some research has noted this effect in passing. Chen’s (2009) research into guanxi

relationships (leader-member relationships with an expectation of reciprocity (Xin & Pearce,

1996)) provides some evidence that this influence exists though this is not the main focus of

the study. The influence of the bypass effect would be of interest to large organisations

which typically have hierarchical management structures and therefore is deserving of

further study.

2.4.3. Leadership Styles

The way that leaders behave and manage their teams has a strong influence on individuals

within those teams. This section examines a number of leadership styles that have been

researched to understand their influence on creativity. What this sub-section finds is that

these leadership styles affect individual or social factors that have already been discussed

earlier. Transformational leaders have received particular attention and will be examined

first followed by a review of other leadership styles.

Transformational leaders are those who motivate employees to work towards achieving the

best outcome for the group (Shin & Zhou, 2007). This contrasts with transactional leadership

where the performance expectations are based on the exchange relationship creating a focus

receiving value in exchange for effort (Pieterse, van Knippenberg, Schippers, & Stam, 2010).

Transformational leaders operate through generating a compelling vision of the future and

provide the encouragement and support for employees to achieve this vision (Gumusluoglu

& Ilsev, 2009). They achieve this through close interactions with employees, modelling the

behaviour that focuses on group outcomes, and encouraging new ways of looking at

problems (Sun et al., 2012). Modern research proves a positive relationship between


Page 26

transformational leadership and increased employee creativity (Gong et al., 2009;

Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Shin & Zhou, 2007; A. Zhang et al., 2011).

As has been seen, promoting creativity is complex and the mechanisms through which

transformational leaders influence creativity is no exception to this. One way that

transformational leadership positively influences employee creativity is by creating a sense

of psychological safety (Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Sun et al., 2012). The moderating effect

of psychological safety has been further confirmed as transformational leaders who do not

create a sense of psychological safety do not generate as high levels of creativity in their

employees (Pieterse et al., 2010). In addition, transformational leaders are identified as

working towards a collective gain and therefore operate in ways that improve the levels of

knowledge sharing within a group (A. Zhang et al., 2011) again, an influencer of creativity.

A final factor to consider is that transformational leaders can influence creativity through

generating a sense of empowerment in employees (Sun et al., 2012). There is a strong link

between the management style of transformational leaders and many of the factors that

positively influence creativity such as empowerment, knowledge sharing, and psychological

safety.

Other leader behaviours have been investigated to understand the influence that these have

on creativity. These provide further evidence that styles of leadership support creativity by

influencing what have been identified as individual factors. As an example, benevolent

leadership supports creativity when employees have a strong sense of working in creative

roles and high levels of autonomy (A. Wang & Cheng, 2010). This creates a link between this

leadership style and both autonomy and role identity. Benevolent leadership is a positive

leadership style in that it is generally supportive of employees rather than being a

controlling style of leadership. It closely matches transformational leadership with the main

difference being that benevolent leadership has a stronger focus on support for employees


Page 27

outside their professional environment (Chan & Mak, 2012). The link between leadership

styles and autonomy is further strengthened as other research has identified that leaders

who manage in a non-controlling fashion increase the creative self-efficacy of employees

(Chong & Ma, 2010). There is also further evidence of the importance of leadership

behaviours operating to support creativity through social factors, in particular psychological

safety. Leaders that are perceived as operating with integrity increase the perception of

psychological safety which then increase employee’s intentions to be creative (Palanski &

Vogelgesang, 2011). In general, leaders who operate in a positive manner, who allow

employees to take risks and operate with fewer constraints obtain higher levels of creative

outputs (Wu, McMullen, Neubert, & Yi, 2008).

Other leadership styles have been found to be detrimental to creativity but in doing so,

affect the same individual and social factors as transformational leadership but in a negative

way. Transactional leadership, which is based around the exchange of value and self-

interest, negatively influences creativity. The negative effect of transactional leadership

operates by reducing the influence of psychological empowerment on creativity as it has

been identified that transactional leadership is more detrimental to creativity in

environments where the employees generally have a high sense of psychological

empowerment (Pieterse et al., 2010). This confirms psychological empowerment as a key

mediating factor between leadership and employee creativity. Similarly authoritarian

leadership is detrimental to creativity through reducing the collective efficacy of employees

and the extent which knowledge is shared within a group (A. Zhang et al., 2011).

In conclusion, there is strong evidence that leadership styles influence creativity but do this

through the mechanisms of psychological empowerment, psychological safety, knowledge

sharing, autonomy, and creative role identity. This evidence is compelling as it has proved

both a positive and negative relationship exists depending on the style of leadership.


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2.4.4. Leader’s Decisions

This section examines the impact that the decisions that leaders make has on the creativity of

employees. Whereas leader-employee relationships are developed over time based on

negotiated meaning, and leadership styles may be ingrained behaviours of leaders, this

category represents those areas where leaders have the most conscious control and includes

rewards and resources.

Rewards, termed as extrinsic motivation, received attention early in the research into

creativity with intrinsic motivation being seen as the more influential of the two (Amabile,

1996). Extrinsic motivation comes from external sources and the reward is often separate

from the task itself (Amabile, 1996). A good example of this is financial rewards where an

employee could be provided with a cash bonus for coming up with a good idea – but the

cash is separate and distinct from the idea. It has been identified recently that financial

rewards of limited value for tasks that require cognitive effort (Ariely, Gneezy, Loewenstein,

& Mazar, 2009). This suggests that financial rewards would be ineffective for promoting

creativity. Historically the view among creativity researchers has matched this and considers

extrinsic motivation to be of limited value (Cooper & Jayatilaka, 2006; Klotz, Wheeler,

Halbesleben, Brock, & Buckley, 2011).

This view that extrinsic motivation does not increase creativity has not been universally

supported in research since 2006 however. Positive links between extrinsic motivation and

creativity have been identified in three studies within the period. Sohn and Jung (2010)

investigated the effects of compensation systems that included financial and non-financial

rewards and found these had a direct and positive effect on creativity. An earlier study also

found extrinsic motivation operated to support other factors, being the self-efficacy and

perseverance of employees which in turn were positively related to creativity (Prabhu et al.,


Page 29

2008). Finally, one study examined the indirect influence of extrinsic motivation on the

intrinsic motivation to be creative. In this case, the study tested and confirmed that extrinsic

motivation affected performance pressure and self-determination and that these in turn

affected the intrinsic motivation to be creative (Eisenberger & Aselage, 2009). These studies

would appear to support a link between rewards and creativity but that the link is indirect

requiring further study to understand the specific nature of how rewards can more reliably

influence creativity.

There is an additional leadership factor that has received attention in the period, which is

the provision of sufficient resources to allow employees to be creative. Lack of resources is a

risk to creativity as employees may direct creative efforts into non-productive activities such

as dealing with the resource constraints rather than the generation of useful ideas (Amabile,

1998). The main resource studied during the period was time, something that leaders either

provide or remove through setting timeframes or changing expected volumes of work.

Within the literature, the availability of time was measured as time pressure, therefore this

report assesses the effect of time pressure on creativity. There is insufficient material about

the provision of other resources such as people and equipment to be able to comment on

these as an influence on creativity.

The studies that examine the effect of time pressure are inconclusive about its influence on

creativity. There are five studies that examine time pressure in the period of interest. The

first two examine whether there is a curvilinear relationship between time pressure and

creativity but these come to opposite conclusions. The first of these confirmed a curvilinear

relationship exists with the highest levels of creativity being found in states of intermediate

time pressure (Ohly, Sonnentag, & Pluntke, 2006). A second study however rejected the

hypothesis that there was a curvilinear relationship between the two factors (Baer &

Oldham, 2006). The remaining studies examine the direct effect of time pressure without


Page 30

looking for a curvilinear relationship. Collectively these are inconclusive as they are

contradictory. One study rejects the hypothesis that there is a negative relationship between

time pressure and creativity (Noefer, Stegmaier, Molter, & Sonntag, 2009). A second found

that both daily and chronic time pressure on employees positively influenced creativity

(Ollila & Elmquist, 2011). The final study identified that reduced time pressure supported

creativity (Hsu & Hsueh-Liang, 2010). The latter two studies appear to directly contradict

each other. Although no conclusions can be drawn about the effect of time pressure, enough

studies have identified that a relationship can exist, therefore time pressure is something

that that leaders need to aware of. It will be included in the framework for this report as a

placeholder and more in depth research is required to confirm how this factor operates.

Such research would need to extend longitudinally to cover literature over a wider period.


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3. Discussion

3.1. Framework of Strategies

The review of the literature has identified a number of areas where managers can focus to

increase the creative output of employees and furthermore has identified that a number of

these areas are linked. The number of factors and the relationships between these are

complex and therefore are best represented as a framework.

This framework consists of three key areas that influence the creativity of employees and

these match those areas covered in the literature review. There are a number of individual

and social factors that are within leaders’ ability to influence that support creativity within

employees. The framework below (figure 3) illustrates the key factors and the linkages

between them.

Figure 3. The framework for creativity derived from creativity literature since 2006.


Page 32

The individual factors that leaders should look to influence revolve around encouraging

employees to express creativity. Finding ways to increase intrinsic motivation is an

important factor specific to individuals. The remaining factors that affect individuals related

to the roles assigned to those employees. Individuals that have a role that has a creative

requirement, autonomy in how they perform the task at hand and a sense of psychological

empowerment are more likely to be creative.

The social factors that support creativity are a combination of those that support the

expression of creativity and those that provide access to knowledge that supports creativity.

The size and diversity of an individual’s networks is important in providing access to

potential sources of knowledge. The literature found few links between leaders and network

size and diversity therefore the framework does not propose a direct link, however leaders

can create environments where employees are encouraged to build and maintain large and

diverse networks outside their teams. The willingness to share information is related to

social networks in that not only must the knowledge be available from external networks,

employees must be willing to share it. The extent of this is sharing and the willingness of

individuals to put forward creative ideas is dependent on the nature of the social

environment. Leaders need to create a sense of psychological safety to generate conditions

so that the sharing of knowledge and the acceptance of creative ideas by the group are

maximised.

The role of leaders is to influence the individual and social factors that promote creativity.

For social factors this is through creating a sense of psychological safety. For individual

factors the picture is more complex. Leaders can assign employees to roles that have a

creative requirement and support this through having creative expectations from the

employee and establishing obligations to motivate creativity. Aspects of psychological

empowerment are another avenue that leaders can use to enhance creativity in particular by


Page 33

assigning tasks that are engaging and significant to employees. This implies that managers

need to take care to match the right tasks to those employees who will feel that they are

engaging and significant. Autonomy appears as the factor that most directly affects intrinsic

motivation and is therefore something that should be a significant consideration for leaders.

Leaders can support autonomy through the development of trust with employees.

Autonomy requires direction however and leaders must ensure that excessive autonomy

does not lead to ambiguity of outcome. Many of the factors identified in this research are

those possessed by transformational leaders. This provides a well understood model for

leaders who may be looking to enhance the creativity of the employees and the teams that

report to them.

Time pressure and extrinsic motivation deserve special comment. These are both noted

within the framework as leaders need to be aware these have potential to influence

employee creativity. The nature of the influence is difficult to discern from the literature in

the period covered so these are marked in the framework as placeholders. For employees

both of these factors are obvious and likely to have a significant impact on their work even if

the effect on creativity is unclear. Even though their effect is inconclusive, they both need to

be recognised. These would both benefit from additional research to confirm their place in

the framework.

There are two aspects of the framework worthy of further comment. The first of these is the

propensity of positive human factors, and the second is the framework demonstrates the

importance of social considerations for promoting creativity.


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3.2. The Importance of Positive Human Factors

Looked from a high level, there is a high propensity of positive human factors involved in

supporting creativity within an organisational environment. Even within the limited period

that this report investigates this includes trust, intrinsic motivation, transformational

leadership, social networks and team relations. These are characteristics that create a

positive environment or are enabling for individuals. These factors represent the human side

of leadership rather than the more traditional transactional style of leadership that focuses

on rewards tied to measures. What this provides leaders is a potential heuristic approach to

encouraging creativity. This approach is for leaders to focus strongly on the people and

finding ways to enable them to be creative. This focus on positive human factors is a simple,

useful strategy for leaders to enhance creativity in employees.

3.3. The Importance of Social Factors

Another overall finding from the review performed in this report is the significant part that

social factors play in promoting creativity. The research into creativity has come a long way

since the psychological beginnings that viewed the individual as the source of creativity. The

framework outlined in this paper is based on a relatively small period and even within this

small period, a large number of factors have been identified that are dependent on

employees’ social environments. Although the generation of creative ideas may come from

individuals, creative output seems to be highly dependent on the social context and the

relationships of the individuals within that social environment. This study has proved that

the creativity of individuals can benefit from relationships between those individuals and

their peers, their leaders, and even through their wider network of acquaintances. For

leaders this means that they need to find ways for their employees to cultivate these

relationships in order to be creative, making this another simple and clear strategy.


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3.4. Conclusion

This is a picture drawn from research performed since 2006 and therefore gives a picture of

where scholars have been most recently focusing their interests. There is much that matches

the themes examined in research prior to 2006 but with the newer research elaborating on

these. What is most interesting is the number of areas that have been found to be deserving

of further study. Some of this is a result of the research expanding into new areas of

creativity like obligation motivation and some because the new conclusions that can be

drawn from the research. The next section explains these recommendations for further

research.


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4. Recommendations for Further Research

4.1. Causality and Generalizability

A review of the literature to identify key themes for improving employee creativity has

uncovered a large amount of choice for managers. There are a large variety of factors that

have been proved through various studies to positively influence creativity. For a manager

attempting to improve the creative output of individuals within an organisation this large

choice creates a high level of uncertainty and complexity. The uncertainty stems from a

number of areas.

Firstly the causality of the findings is a frequently cited limitation as the majority of the

research that tests hypotheses come from point-in-time surveys. This causality was cited as a

limitation by many of the studies across a broad range of topics including networks and

relationships (Chen, 2009; Zhou et al., 2009), leadership style (Pieterse et al., 2010; Shin &

Zhou, 2007), or individual factors (Mathisen, 2011; A. Wang & Cheng, 2010). This causality

limitation creates a level of risk implementing any of the strategies identified in this paper as

the effect of the strategy may not operate as intended. For example, increasing a task’s

autonomy may positively influence creativity, or conversely, tasks with high autonomy may

attract more creative individuals but not encourage creativity from the employee already

performing that task. The growing body of research over time reduces this causality risk, for

example enough research has been completed over the years to have confidence that

increasing intrinsic motivation also increases creativity. To reduce causality issues, there is a

need for further longitudinal academic studies such as that examining affect and creativity

in the work environment (Amabile, Barsade, Mueller, & Staw, 2005).

Another risk for managers is the generalizability of the findings. Each of the research

surveys referred to in this report examines real live organisations each of which exists within


Page 37

its own context. This context includes the obvious such as country, size of organisation, and

industry but can also include the non-obvious such as the life-stage of the organisation and

the competitive environment. In this respect the research to date builds upon previous

research to build a more complete picture however the research since 2006 also surveys a

wide variety of organisations. These range in type from high technology research and

development companies, government organisations, a baby goods retail chain, and a travel

agency. Resolving this generalizability problem would require a meta-analysis of the

literature far larger than has been performed in this paper. For example, 43% of the studies

from East Asia examined creative industries such as high technology firms whereas only

15% of the studies from Western Europe covered the same industries. The demographic

within the studies also varied considerably ranging at the low end from 6% female

respondents in one study to another where 100% of the respondents were female. Given that

only 30% of studies specifically employed gender as a control variable, this provides another

challenge to generalizability. Further research is required to perform a wide ranging meta-

analysis to examine the influence of organisational type and demographic on influencers of

creativity.

4.2. Specific Areas of Further Research

This report indicates a number of specific areas that could benefit from further research. One

of these opportunities for further research is whether there is a curvilinear relationship

between job autonomy and either creativity or intrinsic motivation. This report identified

that although autonomy was positively related to creativity, there may be limits to which

these items are positively linked – particularly if autonomy reaches the point of creating

ambiguity. There is related research that identifies a curvilinear relationship between

autonomy and innovativeness but this curvilinear relationship has not been proved in the


Page 38

case of creativity. This information would be of importance to leaders who rely on

autonomy to promote creativity.

Creativity research has a long history of research into the effect of intrinsic and extrinsic

motivation. This report has found that obligation can also provide a motivation and that this

is an area for further research. Further research would not only confirm whether obligation

motivation promotes creativity but may strengthen our understanding of how this

influences creativity.

This report examines relationships between immediate leaders and employees and has only

cursory look at the influence of the relationship between non-immediate managers and

employees – the bypass effect. There is research that examines the nature of the bypass effect

has on employee performance (J. Yang et al., 2010) but little research on how the bypass

effect influences creativity. More research into this area is recommended to draw a clearer

picture as this would be of value to leaders of organisations with deep hierarchical

structures.

The final areas that could benefit from further research are those related to the decisions of

leaders, specifically extrinsic motivation and time pressure. The review of the literature since

2006 was unable to come to a conclusion about the nature of the influence of these factors on

creativity. These have received attention in the past and a review over a wider period may

confirm their influence on creativity.

4.3. Simplified Frameworks

Further research could examine the benefits of trying to simplify the model by aggregating

creativity influencers at a higher level of abstraction and developing assessments to measure


Page 39

and understand these. Some work already exists as there is a test that assesses the effect of

an organisation’s environment on creativity (Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby, & Herron,

1996). Another potential approach is to look outside creativity literature for models to

apply. One example of this exists in the study of human generated errors in the form of the

‘Swiss Cheese’ model. This model identifies that accidents are a result of failures at various

layers and that for an accident to occur, there needs to be a failure at each layer (Reason,

2000). This is a model that has proved to be successful at allowing managers to deal with the

complexities of human errors in high risk environments such as naval aviation operations

(Department of Defense, 2010). Human error and creativity are similar in that they are

difficult-to-control results of human acts. If such a model were to be defined, it would have

significant potential benefit to simplify the process of enhancing creativity. An outline

comparing the Swiss Cheese model of safety (figure 4) against how such a creativity model

(figure 5) could look is illustrated below. This would advance the current models by

allowing leaders to identify which layers appears to be most inhibiting creativity and focus

their effort on those. This would be a significant body of work deserving of further research.


Page 40

Figure 4. The ‘Swiss Cheese’ model for safety.

Source Reason, 2000, p. 769.

Figure 5: Outline of potential ‘Swiss Cheese’ model for creativity.


Page 41

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6. Appendices

6.1. Journals Included in Initial Literature Search

The following lists journals that were used in the initial literature search.

Academy of Management Journal

Academy of Management Review

Administrative Science Quarterly

Creativity and Innovation Management

Creativity Research Journal

Group and Organization Management

Journal of Applied Psychology

Journal of Business and Psychology

Journal of Management

Journal of Managerial Psychology

Journal of Organizational Behavior

Leadership Quarterly

Organizational Science

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

Creativity report

Business

Transcript of Creativity report