handbook of organizational creativity || creativity in organizations

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C H A P T E R

Handbook of Organizational Creativity.DOI: © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.201210.1016/B978-0-12-374714-3.00027-6

Creativity in Organizations: Conclusions

Issac C. Robledo, Kimberly S. Hester, David R. Peterson, and Michael D. Mumford

The University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK

THE IMPORTANCE OF CREATIVITY TO ORGANIZATIONS

We have had two overall goals in this Handbook of Organizational Creativity. One has been to provide a background for further research in individual, group, and organizational levels that influence creativity and innovation. Another has been to provide managers with practi-cal ideas with regard to encouraging creativity and innovation within organizations. Thus, it is important that we express the importance of creativity and innovation to real-world organizations. For example, today’s rapidly changing environment provides a unique con-text in which creativity occurs (Csikzentmihályi, 1999), a context which needs to be consid-ered for future research.

Specifically, globalization is occurring, changes in technology are now commonplace, market competition is increasing, and economic volatility has also become more of a con-cern. Some evidence pointing to the importance of this context was provided by James and Drown’s (this volume) chapter in the examples they provided of organizations struggling under new, more competitive market conditions. This then leads to the point that organi-zations must tap into their creative potential or risk dying. Thus creativity may hold more importance to organizations now than in the past, and more in the future than in current times. Given these observations it is important to bear in mind that change and competition are unfolding on a larger scale and it may be important to consider creativity and innova-tion on this larger scale, with organizations providing a viable starting point.

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THE DIFFICULTY OF ENCOURAGING AND MANAGING CREATIVITY

An important point to recognize, given the significance of creativity to organizations, is that encouragement and management of creative efforts are not easy endeavors. Something which should be apparent given the chapters in this Handbook is that creativity is complex, leading creative efforts is complex, and planning for creativity is also complex. Thus we are left with an array of interrelated factors affecting creative efforts which are complicated to articulate, and even more complicated to implement successfully within an applied organ-izational setting. Furthermore, creativity is not necessarily beneficial for all organizations. Thus, as much as some may hope, there does not appear to be one easy and quick approach to implementing creativity in organizations.

As an example, Hunter, Cassidy, and Ligon (this volume) argue that given the complex dynamic nature of planning for creativity, organizations should be strongly committed to an endeavor for plans to be beneficial. This suggests that to attempt to develop certain plans, but not putting enough effort in carrying out those plans appropriately, could create undesir-able results for organizational creativity and innovation. Unfortunately, it seems likely that many organizations which have attempted to implement innovation have limited themselves to overly simplistic solutions. Further, there are a variety of contingent relationships noted throughout the Handbook that must be taken into account, such as those considered by Reiter-Palmon, Wigert, and Vreede (this volume), and Oldham and Baer (this volume). Thus, focus-ing extensively on just one aspect of the process will not be very beneficial to the creative production of the organization as a whole.

Having noted some issues that can arise when implementing organizational creativity, it is important to consider how the field as a whole has changed in the past 10 to 15 years. Organizations now place more emphasis on practical late cycle work (e.g., idea evalua-tion, monitoring progress, and implementation), particularly in teams. However, these are areas that have traditionally been neglected in the extant literature. For example, chapters by Alencar (this volume), Ericsson and Moxley (this volume), and Puccio and Cabra (this volume), among others, have noted a disproportionate emphasis on divergent thinking, an early cycle creativity process, in the literature. Thus they point to the need for researchers to focus more on late cycle forms of creativity, which may be equally important but require a different kind of creative thought.

Our aim herein has been to provide a more accurate perspective to improving creative outcomes in organizations by taking into account multiple factors on multiple levels, thus we believe that the Handbook should serve as a basis from which organizations can set up human resources (HR) systems to support innovation. The culmination of key research find-ings which have been provided in the chapters herein, and summarized in the following pages, should aid as guidelines for setting up such systems to support innovation. In the chapters on interventions, in particular, it becomes clear that these are not necessarily easy and straightforward processes to execute.

Jaussi and Benson (this volume), for example, reveal that human resource practices which support creative people and innovative processes are difficult to develop and maintain. Klotz, Wheeler, Halbesleben, Brock, and Buckley (this volume), in turn, note that reward sys-tems may have the potential to facilitate creative contributions, but they are not necessarily

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easy to implement, and Ligon, Graham, Edwards, Osburn, and Hunter (this volume) show that project management activities, such as appraising and developing, are complicated endeavors for innovation. Furthermore, Basadur, Basadur, and Licina (this volume) suggest that organizational development is not necessarily straightforward, as it appears to involve a process of enacting continuous change when attempting to increase creative production. An important point, given these caveats, is that these chapters, and others in the Handbook, do provide guidelines for managing creativity effectively. However, perhaps more important is that these chapters acknowledge the inherent difficulties of managing for creativity and take them into account. More specific guidelines for managing creativity and innovation will be provided in later sections of this conclusion.

It is important to note that, in line with the lack of readily available simple solutions for implementing creativity and innovation in organizations, there also does not seem to be an option of simply implementing a given system by rote and expecting it to sustain itself with-out any added input. Contrariwise, in order for sustained innovation to occur, an organiza-tion must be prepared to have a system to monitor progress and then come up with viable solutions to any new problems identified from that monitoring (e.g., Hunter et al.). One should note that having HR systems based on principles such as those considered in this Handbook, should provide a basis from which sustained organizational innovation can occur.

GENERAL MISCONCEPTIONS

There are a variety of misconceptions about creativity that have been promulgated, and a key contribution of this Handbook is that the various chapters have aided in debunking some misconceptions in the field. Thus we will first highlight some of the key misconceptions, as well as what the research findings actually support.

There seems to be a general belief that people who are positive, relaxed, and distracted from their day-to-day hassles are more creative (e.g., Elsbach & Hargadon, 2006; Mainemelis & Ronson, 2006). However, one should note that according to De Dreu, Baas and Nijstad’s (this vol-ume) chapter, whether affect is positive does not seem to be the most important factor. Rather, the importance of affect to creative outcomes lies in how affect influences task engagement.

Another misconception has been that divergent thinking is synonymous with creativity. This may have been an outcome from an over emphasis on Guilford’s divergent thinking measures in the extant literature. However, creativity actually seems to involve a variety of processes, where divergent thinking represents just one early cycle stage in the creative proc-ess (see Mumford, Mobley, Uhlman, Reiter-Palmon, & Doares, 1991). Puccio and Cabra (this volume), aid in undermining this misconception, by stressing that both idea generation and idea evaluation should be effectively executed in order to produce viable creative solutions. Thus it is important to focus on late cycle innovation processes as well.

Further, a frequent thought has been that bureaucracy must be bad for organizational cre-ativity, that it is too structured and thus will stifle creativity. This misconception may stem from the general notion that structure is not conducive to creative contributions. Another consideration is that bureaucracy is generally affiliated with the nuisances one has to deal with in an organization, rather than the more objective view that bureaucracies may help maintain an efficiency of processes. This has led some to assume bureaucratic control would

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be bad for creative outcomes. In contrast to such lay views, Damanpour and Aravind’s (this volume) findings suggest that some structure is beneficial for creativity, in that a struc-tured environment may mean that creative organizational members could free up cognitive resources to come up with novel ideas.

Another belief has been that creativity can occur randomly and that it is not a disciplined process. Frequently there has been a bias among laypersons to thinking that creativity is a spontaneous phenomenon, with insights occurring potentially after waking from a dream or while observing something in nature unrelated to the actual creative problem at hand. Such phenomena may sometimes take place; however, Ward (this volume) points out that an individual’s representations of problems as well as their search for solutions are more systematic than random.

Thus, from this section one can hopefully gather that general notions about creativity should be viewed with some caution, as many of them are not entirely accurate. Further, one should note that some of these relationships may be more complex than have been expressed in this brief section. The intent here has not been to oversimplify research find-ings, but to emphasize that misguided notions exist in the field, and the chapters in this Handbook make a contribution by debunking commonly held misconceptions. However, more research may be needed to fully determine why certain relationships exist, do not exist, and under what specific conditions they seem to operate.

WHAT THE HANDBOOK OF ORGANIZATIONAL CREATIVITY PROVIDES

The Handbook of Organizational Creativity should hopefully enable the reader to make cer-tain sense of a particularly complex phenomenon. First, in the introduction chapters the author presented the background needed to make sense of this complex phenomenon, fol-lowed by sections focusing on individual, group, and organizational level influences on creativity and innovation in organizations. This framework should allow for a better con-ceptualization of the multiple levels in which this phenomenon operates. Furthermore, key variables operating on these levels have been reviewed, such as affect, expertise, leadership, motivation, and organizational structure, to name a few. Practical suggestions were then provided, in the intervention section, for inducing and regulating creativity and innovation within organizations. This layout should hopefully have provided the reader with a frame-work for understanding organizational creativity and innovation.

Importantly, this Handbook also provides a background for further research. Specifically, this Handbook operates as a compilation of what is currently known about organizational creativity and innovation by experts in the field, but also provides directions for further research in the context of what is known and what is not known. For example, gaps in the literature often present an opportunity for further research. Thus many of the chapters in this Handbook highlight these gaps in the research in key areas. The reader of course, may deduce alternative directions for further research that have not been presented from the content herein, as an exhaustive list of future directions has not been presented.

In addition to providing directions for further research, this Handbook provides practi-cal ideas in regard to how leaders and managers can encourage creativity and innovation

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within an organization, particularly in the section on interventions. Thus far we have men-tioned the inherent difficulties involved in encouraging and managing creative efforts and also dispelled key misconceptions in the field. With consideration of these inherent difficul-ties and misconceptions, the motivated manager who is willing to commit time, energy, and resources to encouraging creativity in the organization will have a firm basis of accumulated research findings from experts in the field to guide the implementation of changes vis-à-vis this Handbook.

ORGANIZATIONAL CREATIVITY RESEARCH

Organizations and Creativity

According to James and Drown’s (this volume) content analysis assessing the degree to which various topics have been investigated in the organizational creativity literature, we observed a promising status for creativity research whereby the overall amount of research in organizational creativity has grown significantly from 1995 to 2010. However there are clearly certain areas which have plateaued, or even declined in amount, in the literature. For example, most studies have focused on the individual level of analysis, ignoring the team level and how one level may impact another level. Given that creativity in organizations has been identified as a multi-level phenomenon (Mumford & Hunter, 2005), it seems that more multi-level studies would contribute much to the extant literature. Another key issue to address for improving the quality of future research lies in the methods being used. Most researchers seem to have a bias for one given method over others, but James and Drown suggest that there has been a lack of research employing multiple methods.

Methods

As mentioned in Mumford, Hester, and Robledo’s (this volume) chapter on methods, there are five key methods which have been used in studies of creativity. These are quali-tative, historiometric, survey, psychometric, and experimental. No single method is a com-plete, adequate description of creative performance. Given the previously noted multi-level nature of creativity, having studies bound by one level can result in ambiguities in inter-pretation. Each method has strengths and weaknesses that need to be considered, and ultimately using multiple methods is often the most appropriate course of action. Thus, it seems researchers would benefit from learning to effectively use a range of methods in organizational creativity research.

An important implication of these observations is that applied psychologists wishing to implement research findings should consider the methodological limitations present in these different types of studies. For example, there are concerns about the generalizability of results in both qualitative and historiometric studies. While this is not typically a con-cern in survey studies, these studies do not focus on unobservable attributes of creative performance. Further, with psychometric studies, because these studies focus on individual variability, other sources of variation attributable to the individual cannot be identified. And with experimental studies there is often little exploration of individual difference variables,

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and typically only two to four variables can be manipulated at a time. These are just some of the general weaknesses of these methods that need to be taken into account by organi-zational researchers, as well as practitioners wishing to apply experimental findings in the workplace.

Fields, Domains, and Individuals

Historically the literature in creativity has taken the perspective of the individual, while Simonton (this volume) in his chapter, reminds us that creativity does not occur in a vac-uum. In fact, Csikszentmihályi (1999) has argued that creativity emerges in a system consist-ing of three parts: the domain, field, and individual. The interaction of the three systemic components decides whether a contribution is indeed creative. For example, one should consider that different domains allow for varying degrees of creativity. Furthermore, deci-sions as to which new contributions will be integrated into the domain occur by the field’s gatekeepers. It is up to these gatekeepers to decide which innovations will be worth pursu-ing, and which ones will not. This suggests that an individual’s creative contributions may be determined by a greater context. Even given the role of the greater system (e.g., domain and field), research trends indicate that the creative individual should likely be a high achiever with a high degree of motivation. However, Simonton points out that the specific processes by which an individual’s abilities and motivation interact with the system have not been well mapped out, and is something that could be of interest to organizational crea-tivity researchers.

Facilitators and Inhibitors

Alencar, in her chapter (this volume), describes some facilitators which have been identi-fied via prior meta-analyses (Runco, 2007): these being positive peer-group, resources, chal-lenges, autonomy, cohesion, intellectual stimulation, and flexibility and risk-taking. Inhibitors were then discussed: intransigency and authoritarian attitudes, protectionism and paternal-ism, lack of integration between sectors, lack of support for new ideas, and lack of encourage-ment. Given these findings, Alencar poses a key question: what is the best strategy to nurture creativity? For example, is it optimal to implement an organizational program which would aim to establish facilitators and reduce inhibitors simultaneously, or is it more beneficial to first eliminate inhibitors, then at a later time incorporate facilitators? Research which would address such questions would hold considerable value for applied settings.

INDIVIDUAL LEVEL INFLUENCES

Abilities

For a long time it was held that a focus on divergent thinking alone would increase indi-vidual creative performance and thus organizational creativity as well, since organizational creativity is a result, in part, of individual creativity. What we have learned from research in the past few decades, as Acar and Runco (this volume) note, is that divergent thinking

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is a fairly complex ability, influenced by task type, knowledge, experience, personality, and attitudes.

While divergent thinking is important for creativity, what should be clear from the chap-ters in this Handbook is that creativity involves much more than generating original ideas. In the past, convergent thinking had been considered a hindrance to creativity. However, Acar and Runco (this volume) suggest that both divergent and convergent thinking abili-ties are needed for creative performance. More specifically, they note that convergent thinking appears to involve both intrapersonal and interpersonal idea evaluation abilities. Intrapersonal evaluation occurs within an individual and interpersonal evaluation involves at least two people. Both types of evaluations are important for organizational creativity (e.g., intrapersonal for leaders and intrapersonal for teams).

The implication of these observations is that creativity is quite complex, with regard to individual abilities, consisting of interactions between ideation and evaluation processes, knowledge, and motivation. In this regard Acar and Runco note that motivation, rather than ability, may be the primary determinant of creative performance. They argue that because motivation varies more than ability and can be more easily manipulated through interven-tions, motivation may account more for differences in performance. However the relative importance of ability and motivation to creativity is an empirical question that should be addressed in future research.

Expertise

Just a decade or so ago there was little, if any, mention of expertise as an important input to creativity. However, expertise is clearly important to creative performance (Mumford, Scott, Gaddis, & Strange, 2002). Ericsson and Moxley (this volume) note that traditional conceptualizations of expertise have typically relied on the assumption that expertise is developed naturally, or passively, simply from prolonged experience in a given domain. However, these authors also present research which shows that while experience may lead naturally to acceptable performance, consistent superior performance results from prolonged deliberative practice—specific activities designed to improve specific aspects of an individu-al’s performance.

While it is clear that deliberative practice is important to superior performance, research has not been conducted to determine what the content of that deliberation should be in order to enhance creativity. Ericsson and Moxley (this volume) argue that deliberative practice appears to lead to acquisition of long-term working memory by stimulating the development of knowledge structures which are more accurate, complex, and organized. Thus effective deliberation might be focused on the organization of concepts, problem-solving strategies, or performance parameters (Mumford, 2000). It is less likely that creative people will deliber-ate much on organizing basic information, as they appear to be very good at building basic models that account for the phenomena at hand (Mumford & Gustafson, 1988). However, such models may be used to generate problem solutions for the task at hand (Finke, Ward, & Smith, 1992). In generating problem solutions such models may also be used to select a particular strategy or set of strategies to apply. Furthermore, creative people seem to be more sensitive to and dwell on anomalous information (Scott, Lonergan, & Mumford, 2005). Thus in generating problem solutions they also appear to deliberate heavily on exceptions.

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Creative Problem-Solving

Problem-solving research has traditionally been approached from one of two perspec-tives—a Gestalt approach, emphasizing problem representation, or an information process-ing approach, emphasizing search processes from initial problem representation to solution generation. Ward (this volume) points out that recent research has focused on the interplay of these two approaches. What should be recognized here is that creative problem-solving (CPS) is based on the complex interaction of two complex processes.

Adding to this complexity, Ward summarizes evidence suggesting that the nature of this interaction may be contingent upon different task situations (e.g., well-defined vs. ill-defined, arrangement vs. inducing structure vs. transformation). Furthermore, the processes involved appear to be influenced both by people’s knowledge structures as well as their recent experi-ences. These observations point to four critical potential influences on CPS—ongoing repre-sentation of problems, cognitive processes, task situations, and knowledge structures. More research is needed to understand the way these four factors converge to influence CPS.

In addition to demonstrating the complexity of CPS, Ward (this volume) also reviews evidence showing that CPS is quite disciplined. This point stands in stark contrast to the misconseption that creativity emerges insightfully when people are relaxed and disen-gaged. For example, Ward presents research conducted under different problem classifica-tion systems (e.g., well-defined vs. ill-defined, insight vs. non-insight, and arrangement vs. inducing structure vs. transformation problems), which suggests that the cognitive proc-esses underlying CPS are executed in a disciplined and purposeful, not a random, man-ner. However, further research is needed to better understand how these processes might change depending on the type of problem being solved.

Idea Generation/Evaluation

Puccio and Cabra (this volume) summarize research that expands our view of idea gener-ation beyond the contributions of traditional approaches focused on divergent thinking and idea generation. To begin, skills usually associated with divergent thinking (e.g., fluency, flexibility, and elaboration) come from Guilford’s divergent thinking work (e.g., Guilford, 1967). However, Puccio and Cabra point out that while much more research has been con-ducted on idea generation than idea evaluation, Guilford’s theory is not the only framework used for identifying skills related to divergent thinking.

On a related note, these authors also review research showing that although the relation-ship between idea generation and idea evaluation is much more complex than has tradition-ally been believed to be the case, the skills associated with these processes can be trained and improved. In order for idea generation and idea evaluation to lead to creativity both processes must be implemented effectively. For this purpose Puccio and Cabra summa-rize criteria used to evaluate creative ideas and products. The resulting list of evaluation methods should prove to be a useful tool for both practitioners and researchers interested in assessment of creativity.

However, given that the research on idea evaluation has not kept pace with research on idea generation, Puccio and Cabra emphasize the need for more research to identify the most effective training methods and how training transfers to the workplace. Of particular interest

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will be identifying idea evaluation strategies organizations can employ in order to cultivate the most promising ideas. Additionally, given that organizational creativity is a relatively new area within a relatively recent field (i.e., creativity), the authors recommend more field studies be conducted to shed more light on the linkages between individual creative proc-esses, such as idea generation and evaluation, and organizational creative performance.

Affect/Motivation

As noted earlier, there has been an overwhelming belief among practitioners that if peo-ple are happy, relaxed, and feel free from various organizational constraints they will be more creative. However, much of the research on the relationship between affect and crea-tivity has demonstrated only mixed effects for the impact of positive moods on creativity, suggesting a more complex relationship than has been previously thought.

De Dreu et al. (this volume) point out that whether a given mood increases (decreases) creativity depends on whether that mood activates (deactivates) the individual. It is the acti-vating effects of moods that lead to higher creative performance. The hedonic tone of moods determines how creative performance is increased. Generally, positive activating moods lead individuals to think more flexibly, while negative activating moods lead to increased cog-nitive persistence. However, more research is needed on the role of negative mood states, especially anger. Further, these studies should employ designs that allow stronger conclu-sions than those that can be drawn from correlational studies.

To complicate matters further, the activating effects of moods appear to depend, at least in part, on the multiple facets of an individual’s motivation. Whether the individual has an approach or avoidance orientation and whether the motivation is intrinsically or extrinsi-cally based are both important considerations. Other motivational influences on creativity include engagement (a prerequisite of achieving flow) induced by fit between the task char-acteristics and internal states, goal orientation, goal setting, and epistemic motivation.

Clearly, the relationships between affect and motivation and creativity are very com-plex. De Dreu et al. (this volume), however, propose a framework that is not only useful for researchers seeking to “incorporate, integrate, and understand the effects of different moods, motivations, and motivational orientations” on creativity, but is also valuable for practitioners who want to enhance creativity in organizations. For example, rather than attempting to create relaxed work environments, managers should seek ways of increasing task engagement when trying to enhance employee creativity.

Personality

Similar to affect and motivation, personality is also related to creativity. Hoff, Carlsson, and Smith (this volume) point out that earlier attempts to identify a creative personal-ity resulted in inconsistent findings. However, more recent evidence suggests that what is unique about creative personalities is that they are characterized by opposites (e.g., extra-verted and introverted). However, more research is needed to further identify the unique personality characteristics of creative individuals across domains. Perhaps more relevant to organizational creativity, Hoff et al. address the question of whether creativity can be devel-oped vis-à-vis personality development. While such an approach appears to be less effective

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than other approaches (e.g., problem-solving or divergent thinking training; see Scott, Leritz, & Mumford, 2004), there is evidence to suggest that personality development may still contribute to enhancing organizational creativity. Future research should consider the potential for personality development to enhance creativity above and beyond any effects due to more effective training approaches. Additionally, if such programs provide incremen-tal benefits, additional research will be needed to develop and refine personality develop-ment interventions aimed at increasing creativity in organizations.

Context

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s theories began to shift from a focus on individual level factors to also consider organizational influences such as culture, resources, and strategy as well as social influences such as group norms and cohesiveness. Today, while many theo-ries take such factors into account, researchers should give more attention to the impact of contextual variables on organizational creativity. Agars, Kaufman; Deane, and Smith (this volume) suggest using a nested approach to examining organizational creativity, taking into account general thematic areas (e.g., industries), domains (e.g., organizations within an industry), and micro domains (e.g., functional areas within an organization). Theoretically, such an approach should further our understanding of perhaps one of the most complex psychological phenomena being studied today. Pragmatically, this nested approach should help identify what research is most applicable in a given domain, leading to interventions that are more relevant and thus more useful.

Agars et al. point out that both causal relationships and basic criteria for identifying creativity may vary across different contexts. For example, while transformational leader-ship has been found to increase creativity in some organizations, Robledo, Peterson, and Mumford (2010) have noted that transformational leadership inhibits creativity among sci-entists and engineers. Regarding definitions of creativity, Agars et al. note that idea genera-tion may be more valued in some contexts while idea evaluation is more valued in others. Furthermore, they note that the way creativity is operationalized and evaluated may dif-fer not just across industries or organizations, but even between different functional areas within a single organization. The inconstancy of creativity across contexts makes it difficult, if not impossible, to provide specific recommendations for enhancing organizational crea-tivity which can be universally applied. Thus, in their chapter, Agars et al. give four broad guiding principles for organizational leaders—emphasize leadership, provide social sup-port, pay attention to culture and climate within domains, and manage resources.

GROUP LEVEL INFLUENCES

Group Composition, Social Processes, and Cognition

As noted in earlier sections, research on organizational creativity has historically focused on the individual. However, it should be recognized that recent work has examined the direct role of groups and teams in the development of creative and innovative products or ideas. Reiter-Palmon et al. (this volume), for example, highlight the importance of group

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composition, social processes, and cognitive processes for team creativity and innovation. In terms of group composition, there is an important shift from focusing on demographic diversity to more functional diversity when looking to improve creativity and innovation through group composition. This suggests that organizations should focus more on other variables such as diversity in education, function in the organization, and job relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities when seeking to enhance creativity and innovation in teams. It may also be important for teams to have diversity in some individual differences, such as creative ability, cognitive style, and personality, but the extant literature is conflicting and further research in this area would be valuable for applied settings.

Reiter-Palmon et al. also remind us of the known importance of social processes through a review of the extensive literature, but suggest that more emphasis should be placed on cognitive processes where there has been a lack of research. For example, brainstorming in the past has been promoted as a cognitive process which promotes creative processes. However, it is important to consider that this process only focuses on the idea genera-tion phase of creativity and ignores later phases of developing a creative product. In fact, brainstorming is only effective if the correct social processes are in use. Thus the authors suggest considering how cognitive processes interact with social processes, and that caution is called for if emphasizing brainstorming when the desired outcome is a creative product.

Teams and Collaboration

Paulus, Dzindlot, and Kohn (this volume) suggest that cognitive processes such as brain-storming can be used for generating ideas, but they must be used appropriately. Several guidelines are provided in this chapter for brainstorming effectively, in addition to guide-lines or strategies for other factors contributing to creativity in teams, such as leadership, conflict, cohesion, and trust. Importantly, caution is called for given that collaborative creativity is very complex. Specifically, a balance of factors such as these must be found, specific combinations of factors must be present at the same time, and stability in team membership may be important for maintaining an appropriate balance of some team fac-tors, especially early in the creative process. The authors conclude that teams will be highly innovative with the right people, the right supporting, motivational, and task contexts, and effective social and cognitive processes. Further, it seems that more research is needed to better identify the optimal patterns and important limiting factors which impact creativity in teams.

Paulus et al. also highlight the importance of considering the phases of creativity in a collaborative team. A review of the literature suggests that different types of people may be better at completing different phases of creativity. For example, divergent thinkers may be better at the exploration phase, which involves idea generation, while others may be better at the exploitation phase, which involves adaptation of creative ideas. However, this does not mean that creativity is unimportant in later phases of product development if an inno-vative product is desired. This point has important implications for both applied settings and future research. Organizations should consider the types of people assigned to each phase of the creative process, and further research is needed to consider the types of creativ-ity needed in later phases of production of an innovative product.

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In addition to reviewing collaborative creativity, the authors discuss an emerging trend in organizations due to technological advances—virtual teams. Although the use of virtual teams is becoming more prevalent, there is still relatively little research examining creativity in virtual teams. It seems that many of the factors impacting traditional creative teams may impact virtual teams in a similar way. Overall, more research is needed in this area, but this chapter does provide some practical guidelines based on the literature on virtual team per-formance in general. One example is that virtual teams should have some face-to-face meet-ings, especially during certain phases of the creative process.

Project Management

Paletz (this volume), in her chapter, reminds us of the importance of project manage-ment and identifies several important project management variables. Although the extant research on project management is extensive, project management factors have often been ignored as variables in research examining creativity and innovation. Thus, there may be a need for more research examining the relationship between project management and creativity and innovation. A consideration in this chapter is that poor management of teams may be to blame for inconsistent findings in factors impacting creativity and inno-vation in teams. For example, research which has suggested that brainstorming is less use-ful as a team cognitive variable has been criticized for ignoring guidelines, such as using a trained facilitator. Therefore, this chapter has highlighted the importance of appropriate use of guidelines, such as those suggested by Paulus et al. (this volume). Her argument that poor project management may be to blame for inconsistent findings may be valid, but at this point more research is needed to find larger effect sizes that would support this argument.

Climate/Environment

West and Sacramento (this volume), in reviewing climate and environmental factors, discuss the longstanding view that strong cultural support for creative efforts is needed to introduce innovative products and procedures, and suggest that organizations could facili-tate creativity and innovation by being supportive and creating environments that nurture the individual differences which contribute to creativity. However, it seems to be the case that a shared vision for creativity is even more important. This point leads us to consider that organizations should develop a team climate for innovation. In addition, managers should strive to create a shared vision in which employees at all levels are involved in posi-tive and constructive debates about the best way to achieve that vision and conflict is seen as an opportunity to find creative solutions. Managers may also be interested in the spe-cific instruments identified in this chapter which can help in planning interventions and promoting creative climates. However, further research is needed to examine such instru-ments to identify how they can best be implemented. In addition, more cross-level research is needed to examine how team and organizational level climate features can enhance or inhibit the effects of individual characteristics on creativity and innovation across varying contexts and time.

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Work Context

Oldham and Baer (this volume) discuss the impact of contextual factors on creativity and innovation through a review of an impressive body of research. The authors found that sev-eral contextual and environmental conditions appear to strongly impact individual and team creativity. However, many of the contextual factors reviewed appear to differ in direction and consistency across studies. A possible explanation for conflicting findings across stud-ies is that many contextual factors may only impact creativity if certain individual charac-teristics or other contextual factors are present. Thus, a complex pattern of contextual factors and individual characteristics may exist, which needs to be further researched. In addition, the authors have noted a significant lack of research examining the impact of contextual fac-tors on teams rather than individuals. None the less, this chapter does provide some useful guidelines for applied settings based on the contextual factors that appear to have consist-ent, positive impacts on creativity, such as job design and social environment, while research examining the most effective ways of changing these contextual factors is still needed.

Leadership

Marion (this volume) contrasts the traditional entity based approach of studying crea-tivity to a complexity leadership approach. Marion argues that a complexity leadership approach allows for research examining how creativity is a function of interdependent inter-actions under conditions of conflicting constraints, heterogeneity, pressure, and uncertainty. Given this argument, one should note that there is a lack of empirical support for complex-ity theory, and thus more research in the area is necessary to further support the theory. None the less, Marion’s chapter is valuable in that it provides a detailed discussion of the important attributes of leader behavior. Specifically, this chapter has a discussion of the importance of fostering interaction, interdependency, heterogeneity, pressure, task-related conflict, and adaptive rules when creativity is a desired outcome. For example, Danneels and Sethi (2003) found that constructive, or task-related, conflict had a positive effect on cre-ativity in new products. Marion also highlights that creativity is enabled by leaders who champion creative ideas, foster sensemaking, and provide a safe environment. For exam-ple, Howell and Boies (2004) found that champions were able to promote creativity due to their enthusiastic support for new ideas and their ability to sell the ideas to the organiza-tion. Although more research is needed to support Marion’s approach to applying these attributes in a complexity approach, managers should benefit from attending to the leader skills which have been provided in this chapter.

ORGANIZATION LEVEL INFLUENCES

Structure

Kazanjian and Drazin (this volume) remind us that theories of creativity have often neglected that creative tasks might be a function of larger organizational efforts, involving interdependencies between units across organizational systems. Thus, the organizational

F. CONCLUSIONS


level has been an important yet often overlooked level of influence on creativity and innovation.

Bearing this point in mind, Damanpour and Aravind (this volume) review the literature on structuring for innovation, where the findings have been divided up by two periods: 1967–1988, and 1990–2009. Overall, the findings for both time periods were generally con-sistent with each other. Across both time periods some salient determinants of innovation were: technical knowledge resources, specialization, external communication, and complex-ity. A unique finding across both time periods was that centralization and formalization, measures of bureaucratic control expected to relate negatively to innovation, actually pro-duced mixed results. Essentially, there was no consistent negative effect across both time periods for either one of these bureaucratic measures. This contradicts the general expec-tation in the field for bureaucracy to inhibit innovation. Given the lack of consistent find-ings, there may be a complex relationship between bureaucratic control and innovation, and more investigation may be needed into specific mediators and moderators that impact this relationship. An overarching consideration of the authors is that innovation in organizations is planned and structured, thus controlling the process would be important for the appro-priate management of innovation.

In light of this observation that bureaucracy in organizations is not necessarily inhibi-tory for innovation, Damanpour and Aravind identify a trend from organic and mechanistic explanations of organizational structure in the past, to more ambidextrous (e.g., integra-tion of organic and mechanistic) explanations of organizational structure currently. Further, given a lack of focus on research on ambidexterity, this could be a plausible direction for future research.

An example of the possible misguided nature of using organic and mechanistic structure explanations is in arguments that certain organizational conditions facilitate incremental innovations, and other organizational conditions would facilitate radical innovations. As plausible as this may sound, the author’s results have not shown a difference in the struc-tures which support incremental vs. radical innovations. Thus ambidextrous frameworks for explaining organizational structure for innovation seem to be more viable.

Planning

Hunter et al. (this volume) point out that given the competitive and challenging context of today’s organizations, many organizations can see the advantage in pursuing creativity, but defining the actual path toward creative attainment seems to be less clear. Creativity is a complex endeavor, thus plans appear to provide a mechanism which aids in implementing creativity within organizations. One example showing the importance of planning for inno-vation is that people left to their own devices will tend to avoid change and prefer what is more familiar to them.

In their chapter, Hunter et al. mention a variety of sub-plan types which are useful for planning for innovation. These sub-plans must then be integrated into a broader organi-zational plan. Furthermore there are specific planning requirements such as expertise and leadership, which are needed. Given the need for sub-plans, broader organizational plans, and general planning requirements, it seems clear that planning for innovation is a com-plex and resource intensive process. One should recognize that while the 4-stage framework

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ORgANIzATION LEvEL INfLUENCES 721

presented by Hunter et al. shares key characteristics with Mumford et al.’s (1991) 8-stage model, further research is needed to clarify how many stages are truly present in planning for innovation.

An example of properly executing a plan for innovation is when Hunter et al. suggest that pursuing more congruent ideas organizationally can routinize enough processes to allow for more innovation to occur in different areas. Thus organizations can save time and resources on projects that have been built around a common theme, then allowing for more time and resources to delegate to new innovations. However, one should note that a critical issue in organizations is how research themes should be identified in the first place. Thus, given the lack of research in this area, this could be a viable point for further investigation. Furthermore, since acquiring expertise is time consuming, projects being pursued should be integrated, thus allowing expertise to be more concentrated and elaborated to the goals of the organization.

Learning and Knowledge Management

An example of how knowledge can manifest itself is provided by Kazanjian and Drazin (this volume), where experiential learning occurs at individual and group levels, providing a basis from which organizational level knowledge, such as technology, can be institutional-ized (Leonard, 1998; Mumford, 2000). Importantly, the relationship between creativity, new knowledge development, and organizational learning has seldom been examined, thus pre-senting an avenue for future research.

An interesting framework for knowledge management is proposed by Kazanjian and Drazin. In brief, leveraging existing knowledge bases is most important for developing new products, recombining and extending existing knowledge bases is most important for new platform development, and importing or acquiring new knowledge bases is most impor-tant for development of a new and less related business. Thus acquiring new knowledge becomes more important the more radically different a new product pursuit is from the cur-rent organizational products. A lack of research along these lines has been in resource shar-ing as knowledge leveraging in the context of organizational creativity.

Change, Innovation, and Creativity

In Dunne and Dougherty’s chapter (this volume), we are presented with three tensions in creativity and innovation research. These are supportive vs. demanding managers, weak vs. strong ties, and job vs. product complexity. We are then presented with three types of organ-izing. There is bureaucratic organizing, used by organizations with functional departments and a clear hierarchy, and adaptive organizing, where change is fast and continuous. A new type of organization theorized is transformative organization, which has been described as being on the edge of chaos and likely occurring in high technology sectors (Brown & Eisenhardt, 1998).

In this chapter creativity in bureaucratic organizations is explained by supportive man-agers, weak ties, and job complexity, whereas in adaptive organizations it is explained by demanding managers, strong ties, and product complexity. In contrast, transformative organizations are presented as particularly complex, and more integrative, in comparison to

F. CONCLUSIONS


bureaucratic and adaptive organizations. For example, transformative organizations exhibit both job and product complexity, and weak vs. strong ties are not in conflict because peo-ple focus on the knowledge needs of the organization. It will be interesting to see which industries or situations call for transformative organizing, given that this is a newer area. Specifically, researchers may wish to examine whether transformative organizing is sustain-able for long periods, and if so, what would facilitate such sustainability.

INTERVENTIONS

Career Paths and Selection

Jaussi and Benson (this volume) suggest that human resource (HR) practices can play a significant role in the improvement of individual creativity and organizational innovation. They evidence that HR practices which support creative people and innovative processes are difficult to develop and maintain, but highlight the possible value for organizations that do. For example, a current trend is a shift toward placing creative individuals in traditionally non-creative jobs in order to encourage innovation rather than reserving creative individuals for traditionally creative jobs, such as advertising and product development. Examples such as these convey the importance of HR practices in influencing organizational creativity.

These findings highlight the importance of conducting research on creative individu-als. Thus Jaussi and Benson review research examining creative individuals’ work, career anchors, occupational choices, trajectories, and career success, followed by a discussion of the implications this research has for HR practices. Jaussi and Benson also provide a set of suggestions for organizations seeking to gain a competitive advantage with an HR system that promotes creativity and innovation through recruitment, selection, job design, per-formance appraisal, incentives, training, and career development. For example, the authors suggest that HR management should offer opportunities for professional recognition and achievement, promotions into jobs with high autonomy, as well as avoiding overly strict management regulations of personnel. Also, for creative employees, administrative distrac-tions should be reduced, innovative thinking should be promoted, and support for failure should be provided (Goffee & Jones, 2007). While the argument presented for the benefit of having one HR system that promotes and supports creativity in all employees is persua-sive, more research is needed to determine whether organizations would reap more benefits from having multiple HR systems for different departments. Currently, it is unclear whether traditionally creative departments (e.g., R&D departments) should be handled in the same manner as employees in jobs which have not traditionally required creativity. Thus more research is needed to examine the HR implications that this chapter has drawn from the research on creative individuals.

Rewards

Klotz et al. (this volume), in their chapter, discuss the impact of reward systems on creativity in the workplace. The authors examine the role of creativity in theories of moti-vation through a review of research on the influence of rewards on creativity and the

F. CONCLUSIONS

INTERvENTIONS 723

organizational factors that moderate this relationship. Previous research has suggested that extrinsic reward systems can be detrimental to creative performance. However, a review of current research led Klotz et al. to suggest that extrinsic reward systems can add incremen-tal improvements in creative performance if intrinsic motivation is established first and the right individual and contextual factors are present. Thus, one should consider that reward systems may have the potential to facilitate, develop, and improve creative performance, but they are difficult to design and implement in that they are not “one size fits all” across different organizations. One should recognize that this chapter provides a valuable set of guidelines, including a discussion of key contextual factors, for organizations seeking to use rewards to improve creative performance. Furthermore, it seems that although the present research has provided insight into the impact of reward systems on creativity, more longitu-dinal, multi-method, and multi-level research is needed to better examine this relationship over time and across levels of an organization.

Training, Development, and Performance Management

Ligon et al. (this volume) discuss the impact of performance appraisal and training/development on creativity in their chapter on performance management. Based on having reviewed the research on these interventions, the authors suggest that a blanket approach to performance management will be less useful, or even detrimental, to innovation in organi-zations. For example, project management approaches for individuals engaging in crea-tive work should differ from those engaging in routine work for the organization. Another important finding is that creativity training, especially cognitive training, is in fact effective in improving creativity. Based on these key findings, Ligon et al. provide several guidelines for performance management interventions. For example, with regards to evaluation, man-agers may want to allow creative employees to evaluate their own work because they may be better evaluators of innovation within their area. Beyond these guidelines, it is important to integrate these interventions such that developmental planning should be based on per-formance appraisals while the skills learned in training should be rewarded. Based on these observations, the authors have proposed a model integrating these performance manage-ment interventions. Furthermore, several areas that need further research have been high-lighted, such as examining the result of increasing frequency of performance reviews, the role of individual differences, and the amount of time we can expect an intervention to yield performance improvements. Of importance to practitioners is that a review of the available empirical evidence has allowed this chapter to provide some insight for organizations seek-ing to improve creativity through performance management interventions.

Organizational Development

As a reasonable conclusion to the interventions section, Basadur et al. (this volume) dis-cuss Organizational Development (OD) as an ongoing process of implementing change through organizational creativity management and leadership rather than a set of discrete interventions. The authors provide a viable summary of techniques used in OD, as well as a new perspective on OD that stresses creativity. For example, in the past most OD efforts have focused on improving efficiency, but Basadur et al. point out that a balance must be

F. CONCLUSIONS


found between efficiency and adaptability if an organization seeks to be innovative in order to stay competitive in today’s environment. This chapter provides an integrated approach to improving organizational adaptability through the encouragement of mastery of new skills and creation of an infrastructure that ensures that the new skills will be used. Specifically, Basadur et al. suggest that many leaders lack the deep skills, such as problem finding and problem definition, which are necessary in executing creativity as a standard everyday proc-ess, but that management training can prove to be a successful intervention. However, fur-ther research is needed to assess the most efficient way to make this shift in management education. In addition, further research is needed to identify how organizations can best determine the appropriate balance of adaptability and efficiency and what factors, or sig-nals, are best at enabling an organization to effectively modify this balance.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Limitations

At this point we should note some limitations of this Handbook as a whole. For one, not all topics relevant to organizational creativity have been presented. Such topics may include economic factors, corporate willingness to invest, and a field’s readiness for innovation. Further, while we have encouraged research in a multi-level perspective, we have mostly constrained ourselves to variables operating on the organizational, group, or individual level, and not necessarily variables operating across industries or on a larger societal scale. Another consideration is that the chapters in this handbook have considered influences on organizational creativity in general, and have not limited conclusions to a specific domain, thus the findings in this handbook may not necessarily be generalizable across all domains. These limitations are important to bear in mind, as there may be important variables influ-encing organizational creativity which have not been considered herein, or have yet to be identified. Even given these limitations, this handbook should provide a noteworthy con-tribution to the field. Moreover, it is not possible to consider all potential factors within a single handbook.

Summary

In having reviewed the research by the chapter authors in this Handbook, we have identi-fied what some significant factors are which contribute to creativity in organizations, how they contribute to organizational creativity, as well as why and when, or under what situ-ations, they contribute to organizational creativity. Importantly, this information has been presented with regard to where the field has been and where it is currently, as well as in terms of where the field is headed. Thus we have provided a context for understanding the current available knowledge base of creativity and innovation in organizations.

Furthermore, we have not only considered the importance of variables that influ-ence organizational creativity, but we have also aimed to provide practical ideas as to how leaders and managers can encourage creativity and innovation within their respec-tive organizations. Ultimately, we have hoped to provide a framework for understanding

F. CONCLUSIONS

725REfERENCES

the key components of organizational creativity from which further research directions can be drawn and mechanisms for sustained innovation can be implemented within the organization.

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