Work environments for employee creativity

Innovative organisations need creative employees who generate new ideas for product or process innovation. This paper presents a conceptual framework for the effect of personal, social-organisational and physical factors on employee creativity. Based on this framework, an instrument to analyse the extent to which the work environment enhances creativity is developed. This instrument was applied to a sample of 409 employees and support was found for the hypothesis that a creative work environment enhances creative performance. This paper illustrates how the instrument can be used in companies to select and implement improvements. STATEMENT OF RELEVANCE: The ergonomics discipline addresses the work environment mainly for improving health and safety and sometimes productivity and quality. This paper opens a new area for ergonomics: designing work environments for enhancing employee creativity in order to strengthen an organisation's capability for product and process innovation and, consequently, its competitiveness.     

Information technology,the organizational capability of proactive corporate environmental strategy and firm performance: a resource-based analysis

The study of the relationships between information technology (IT), environmental organizational issues and firm performance is a cutting-edge research topic for the information systems (IS) community. However, at present we know very little about these relationships. Drawing on the perspective of IT-enabled organizational capabilities and the literature on organizations and the natural environment, our study introduces conceptually the construct organizational capability of proactive corporate environmental strategy to the IS field. We propose that IT capability may enable the implementation of a proactive environmental strategy and that this strategy could play a significant role in determining the business value of IT. Using structural equations modeling with data collected from 63 firms, we find that IT capability is an enabler of proactive environmental strategy and that this strategy plays a significant role in mediating the effects of IT on firm performance. Our study provides initial evidence on the role of IT in the implementation of proactive environmental practices. Our results suggest to IT executives that their decisions matter in shaping environmental sustainability, which in turn will generate business value from IT.     

A Theoretical Framework Linking Creativity,Empowerment, and Organizational Memory

Empowerment, creativity, and organizational memory are constructs that have been researched in MIS. While each construct has received individual attention, we have found relatively little research linking them. One of the major edicts of empowerment is delegation of decision making authority to lower-level employees. Increased authority allows employees more freedom to be creative. However, if creative thought is generated but not captured, innovative ideas may be lost. Organizational memory can capture creative ideas as they are generated so that empowered teams can draw upon positive creative experiences. We developed a theoretical model to illuminate the relationships between organizational memory, worker empowerment, and creativity. The model portrays the linkages between empowerment and creativity, creativity and organizational memory, and organizational memory and empowerment. The model was developed based on the literature in each respective area and an interview-based study concerning “empowered” systems development project teams and organizational memory. Analysis of the interview data revealed that empowered workers generate creative solutions to problems. However, creative solutions can only be used for future projects if they are somehow recorded into organizational memory. Organizations that empowered their workforce and embraced creativity reported increased customer satisfaction, waste reduction, and some quality gains. In contrast, those that did not empower reported little or no change. Organizations that recorded creative solutions to problems believe that retrieval of this information could be potentially useful for future projects. Potential challenges faced by organizations classified into each cell are also presented. This classification scheme should prove useful as a guide to organizations examining the potential benefits and pitfalls of worker empowerment and organizational memory.     

Organizational Variables for Developing Collective Creativity in Business: A Case from an Italian Fashion Design Company

The goal of this article is to propose a theoretical framework for collective creativity within an organizational design perspective and to help clarify this concept and how collective creativity can be purposefully managed. In particular, this study identifies relevant organizational variables for enhancing collective creativity and examines the relationship between collective creativity and organizational performance. The research draws upon a survey developed in the context of an in‐depth collaborative research study with an Italian fashion design company. As the theory on collective creativity is quite dispersed, the first part of the article attempts to define collective creativity and integrate different theoretical perspectives. Then, method and empirical findings are described. In the last part, the discussion illustrates why it is important for researchers and practitioners to be aware of the concept of collective creativity and its purposeful management.     

Emotions as Constraining and Facilitating Factors for Creativity: Companionate Love and Anger

Generally the literature has favoured the notion that positive affect facilitates creative performance. However, a recent critical review has demonstrated that negative affect can enhance cognitive performance and improve motivation. Moreover, with a few exceptions, previous research comparing positive and negative affect as either a facilitator of or a constraint on creativity factors has rested primarily on the valence approach. Unfortunately, the results were mixed. This paper explores the effects of two common specific emotions elicited in work team processes, anger and companionate love, on individual creativity, with the cognitive‐activation and the functions‐of‐emotions perspectives. The results from our experiment demonstrate that positive emotions can constrain and negative emotions can foster creative performance. More specifically, we found that companionate love constrains creativity, whereas anger facilitates it. Furthermore, our qualitative analyses of interviews with employees justify the implications of the experimental results in an organizational context. Our findings suggest that nurturing a moderate degree of hostility towards opposing ideas from others in an idea‐generation process while concurrently encouraging thoughtfulness in an idea‐implementation process can facilitate managing organizational innovation processes.     

Making the most out of the innovation of meaning: The importance of inclusion for creativity in inside-out envisioning

Innovation of meaning (IoM) is one of the streams that has attracted attention in design thinking research. Inside-out envisioning aims to assist non-designer employees practice IoM in a similar manner to how visionary executives and designers perform. The process starts with exposing their intrinsic visions to innovate the dominant social or organizational meanings. This makes the employees' creativity that comes from intrinsic goals and values an important driving force of inside-out envisioning. Thus, it is crucial to foster an organizational culture that encourages employees to engage in inside-out envisioning and enhance their creativity. This study explores whether inclusion, as an organizational culture, is an antecedent of creativity in inside-out envisioning. Inclusion refers to a state in which an individual's uniqueness is valued by other group members and externalized to improve group performance. Based on data from a survey conducted with 1104 Japanese employees, this study reveals that inclusion significantly impacts creativity in inside-out envisioning. A multigroup analysis demonstrates differences in the effects of the mediating variables of this relationship based on the successful experience of inside-out envisioning. This study concludes that it is important for design thinking researchers to study inclusion more deeply as a way to implement inside-out envisioning.     

Entrepreneurship, knowledge integration capability, and firm performance: An empirical study

From the knowledge-based view, an organization is considered an entity that integrates and distributes knowledge to produce products and services. Knowledge is acknowledged as a sustainable basis of competitive advantage that many organizations possess. Entrepreneurial activity also has been viewed as an essential feature for organizations to survive and prosper in today??s turbulent environment. In this study, we explore the effect of entrepreneurship on organizational performance through knowledge integration capability. Our research model depicts the firm as a knowledge integration institution that produces its offerings through specialized knowledge integration capability that consists of learning culture, knowledge management process, and information technology capability. The results show a strong support for the relationship between entrepreneurship and knowledge integration capability. We also found that the effect of entrepreneurial activities on firm performance was mediated by knowledge integration capability.     

Moral organizational creativity: Exploring ethical antecedents for a new construct

The objective of this article is to provide the means of supporting the coexistence of creativity and ethics at the organizational level. It contributes to the literature by offering a process model that shows how organizational creativity can be combined with ethics. This work begins by examining how the features of ethical work climates may affect creativity in organizations. We advocate the position that an organization can be both creative and moral through the triggering of moral imagination, dependent in part on the type of ethical work climate espoused in the workplace. As a result, we offer a new formulation of organizational creativity that includes an explicit ethical dimension: moral organizational creativity. This expanded concept treats the dominant elements of ethical work climates and moral imagination as essential ingredients of ethical and organizational creativity. Investigating the link between ethical work climates and moral imagination is meaningful to understanding how an organization can address the requirements of creativity and ethics and therefore enhance organizational creativity.     

Using Multiple Solution Tasks for the Evaluation of Students’ Problem-Solving Performance in Geometry

Abstract

The article demonstrates that multiple solution tasks (MSTs) in the context of geometry can serve as a research instrument for evaluating geometry knowledge and creativity. Geometry knowledge is evaluated based on the correctness and connectedness of solutions, whereas creativity is evaluated based on a combination of fluency, flexibility, and originality of solutions. In this article, the MST research instrument is introduced in connection with the theoretical analysis of the research literature and then explained and analyzed using geometry students’ performance results on one MST. The analysis shows that the research instrument differentiates between students belonging to high- and regular-level instruction groups and sheds light on the interrelations between components of geometry knowledge and creativity.     

Drivers of ICT acceptance and implementation in micro-firms in the estate agent sector: influence on organizational performance

From the technology acceptance model (TAM), this study aims to identify the drivers of successful implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) in micro-firms and their impact on organizational performance. To this end, a quantitative study was undertaken, where the data-collecting instrument was an online questionnaire administered to a sample of micro-firms belonging to the Portuguese estate agent sector. Based on the results obtained from 102 valid responses, among the drivers identified, internal factors, more precisely, organizational aspects were found to allow successful implementation of ICT in the firms studied here and to be the ones with the greatest influence on their organizational performance. However, external factors, such as external information technology consultants and networking, did not show a statistically significant influence on organizational performance in estate agent micro-firms. The study also presents some implications for theory and practice in this field of research.     

The dynamic influence of emotions on game-based creativity: An integrated analysis of emotional valence,activation strength,and regulation focus

Emotion has been identified as an important predictor of creativity, but little attention has been put on investigating how emotion, especially that considers regulation focus, may dynamically influence male and female students' creativity in game-based situations. To explore the dynamic relationship between various types of emotions and creativity during game playing, 266 college students were included and the Creativity Game-based Evaluation System (CGES) was developed in this study. Four types of emotions integrating perspectives of valence (positive vs. negative), activation (high vs. low), and regulatory focus (prevention vs. promotion) were investigated in this study: the positive-low activation-prevention emotion (P-L-Pre) (calm and relaxed), the positive-high activation-promotion emotion (P-H-Pro) (happy and elated), the negative-high activation-prevention emotion (N-H-Pre) (nervous and anxious), and the negative-high activation-promotion emotion (N-H-Pro) (frustrated and angry). The results revealed that, although there was a slight gender difference in game-based creativity, the prediction patterns of emotions in game-based creativity were very similar among participants with different genders. Specifically, emotions during game playing can better predict creativity than those of the baseline; moreover, the P-H-Pro emotion can facilitate performance on creativity, whereas the N-H-Pro emotion can decrease creativity performance. Thus, providing appropriate challenges to induce highly-activated and promotion-focused positive emotions are critical for the success of games designed to improve creativity.     

Leadership Style,Social Climate And Organizational Outcomes: A study of a Swedish University College

The study raises the question of the dual influence of leadership style on organizational outcomes by way of climate and directly. Research material primarily collected for a study of the creative organizational and individual resources of a state university college in Sweden was utilized and further analysed. A sample of 130 teachers answered questionnaires about the creative climate in their departments, the department head’s leadership style and the performance of the department in terms of creativity and productivity. The results indicate that in this organization the behavioural style of the manager affects organizational results only through influencing the social climate. The implications of the results considering the kind of organization studied are discussed.     

The Antecedents of Creativity Revisited: A Process Perspective

This study invokes a process view on employee creativity to uncover how the different stages of the creative process are associated with different antecedents. Specifically, we explore the role of five previously identified antecedents of organizational creativity in the different phases of the creative process within organizations: (1) personality; (2) rewards; (3) the role of co‐workers; (4) leadership; and (5) organizational resources. In an analysis of 22 case studies we found that antecedents of creativity indeed have different roles in different stages of the creative process and that antecedents that are helpful in one stage of the creative process, can be detrimental for another stage. Such results highlight the importance of conceptualizing creativity as a process, rather than as an outcome variable.     

Organizational Creativity in Heterarchies: The Case of VFX Production

The aim of this paper is to portray organizational creativity as embedded in heterarchies rather than hierarchies or homoarchies. By drawing upon the case of visual effects (VFX) production, we demonstrate how heterarchies with multilayered, overlapping and incongruent organizational forms constitute a potential for organizational creativity that gets activated through a particular institutional arrangement of diversity. The article shows that analytically focusing on the properties of heterarchies can be a fruitful way to conceptualize context complexity as a resource rather than a barrier for organizational creativity.     

Performance implications of information-value offering in e-service systems: Examining the resource-based perspective and innovation strategy

This research examines the performance implications of information-value offering in e-service systems. Specifically, this study introduces both a resource-based perspective that combines technology, human, and business resources to develop an e-service capability, and an innovation strategy that emphasizes service innovation orientation to examine information-value offering. This study also examines how firms bundle e-service capability and service innovation orientation to enhance information-value offering that enhances customer relationships and organizational performance. The results from a survey of 115 financial service firms in Taiwan highlight the importance of how e-service capability and service innovation orientation leads to information-value offering and that this value is shown to positively influence organizational performance by customer relationship performance. The results suggest that researchers and practitioners should pay special attention to the complementary resource-strategy that are needed to successfully implement e-service systems initiatives and that an emphasis on the resource or strategy alone may not be sufficient.     

Unpacking the effect of IT capability on the performance of export-focused SMEs: a report from China

Abstract.  Export-focused small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China face a number of barriers to success, two primary ones being the liability of foreignness and resource scarcity. In order to transcend these challenges and be able to survive/prosper in the hypercompetitive international market, where players include large resourceful multinational organizations with experience in varied national contexts, these firms need to develop different organizational capabilities. In this paper, we specifically examine the role of a key organizational capability – information technology (IT) capability – and its different dimensions, in determining performance of export-focused SMEs in China. Our study reveals that IT capability has a positive impact on such firms' performance. This finding indicates the need for their owners/managers to invest in IT capability. Further, the study also highlights specific sub-dimensions of IT capability that export-focused Chinese SMEs should (or should not) develop, so as to derive maximum performance-related gains for the minimum amount spent on IT.     

Balancing exploration and exploitation of IT resources: the influence of Digital Business Intensity on perceived organizational performance

Facing a barrage of novel information technology (IT), organizations must invest on the basis of the impact of IT capabilities on the organization’s performance. This research extends Bharadwaj’s (MIS Quarterly 169–196, 2000) resource-based view of the relationship between IT capability and performance by introducing both the mediating and moderating effects of Digital Business Intensity (DBI). Empirical data collected from CIO’s from US firms reveal that although IT capability positively influences organizational performance, this relationship may differ in strength at different levels of DBI. Our study also finds that IT capability is important in determining DBI, which in turn influences organizational performance. Findings highlight tensions between DBI exploration and IT capabilities exploitation. Results also suggest that companies that leverage their existing IT capabilities to drive DBI are more adept at securing performance returns. However, when DBI investments do not complement existing IT capabilities, DBI appears to dampen performance, further accentuated for high-DBI firms.     

The roles of psychological climate,information management capabilities,and IT support on knowledge-sharing: an MOA perspective

Leveraging the motivation-opportunity-ability (MOA) theoretical framework and past research on psychological climate, this study analyzes three antecedent factors driving an individual’s knowledge-sharing (KS) within organizations: knowledge-sharing psychological climate as motivation, information management capability as ability, and organizational information technology support as opportunity. An empirical examination reveals that a motivating psychological climate has a primary impact on KS behavior, and the impact of perceived information management capability on sharing is mediated by the psychological climate. Perceived organizational use of information technology to support knowledge work bears strong influence on information management capabilities but not on sharing, suggesting that investment in IT does have indirect payoffs. The study is the first to position the opportunity→ability→motivation causal network in an individual’s KS behavior. The findings suggest that managers need to consider the pre-requisite roles of IT-enabled opportunities and workers’ information management abilities when building an all-important motivating climate to share.     

Can people experience romantic love for artificial intelligence? An empirical study of intelligent assistants

Along with the development of artificial intelligence (AI), more IT applications based on AI are being created. A personal intelligent assistant is an AI application that provides information, education, consulting, or entertainment to users. Due to their high levels of cognitive and emotional capabilities, we assume that users can form humanlike relationships with intelligent assistants, therefore, we develop a research model based on the theory of love. Data were collected from users of intelligent assistants through a survey. The results indicate that users can develop intimacy and passion for an AI application similar to that experienced with human beings. These feelings are related to users’ commitment, promoting the usage of an intelligent assistant, influenced by AI factors (performance efficacy and emotional capability), and moderated by human trust disposition.     

Could a Created Being Ever be Creative? Some Philosophical Remarks on Creativity and AI Development

Creativity has a special role in enabling humans to develop beyond the fulfilment of simple primary functions. This factor is significant for Artificial Intelligence (AI) developers who take replication to be the primary goal, since moves toward creating autonomous artificial-beings beg questions about their potential for creativity. Using Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following and language-games, I argue that although some AI programs appear creative, to call these programmed acts creative in our terms is to misunderstand the use of this word in language. I conclude that replication is not the best way forward for AI development in matters of creativity.