organizational conflict and individual creativity

Organizational Conflict and Individual Creativity

KEITH JAMES~

JULIE CHEN Department of Psychology, Colorado State University

CATHERINE GOLDBERG Cornell University Medical College

A theory of the interaction of perceptions of conflict and dispositional tendencies on individual creativity is presented and tested. It is argued that there are two broad classes of people: those who are primarily socially oriented and those who are primarily instrumentally oriented. Further, on tasks that match their orientation, individuals are proposed to generally adhere to patterns and strategies that experience has taught them are most likely to work. This should mitigate against creativity. On tasks outside of their area of specialization, however, individuals are typically expected to be more random in their thinking, which should promote creativity. Perceived conflict is argued to lead to a re- versal of this pattern, however. That is, perceptions of conflict were expected to promote creativity on tasks within, and reduce it on tasks outside of, individuals area of primary interest. These ideas were tested in two studies, one with university employees and one with minority students. The results of both studies generally supported the theory.

Research on factors that can contribute to the generation of creative solutions to organizational problems is very much needed. Organiza- tions in today's turbulent and competitive economy need creativity from their employees if they are to survive and be successful (Nystrom, 1979; Nemeth & Staw, 1989; Schein, 1985). The focus of this paper is one way in which personal and organizational characteristics might interact to influence individual creativity.

Most theoretical and empirical examinations of creativity have treated it as an individual difference variable. Like most other behaviors creativity is, however, very likely the result of an interaction of

'Both junior authors contributed equally to this work. Order of authorship for them was determined randomly. The authors would like to thank Rick Hollenbeck, Mabel Payne, and Patty Stansfield for assisting with the collection and scoring of the data reported in this paper. They also thank Mark Haney and Jannine Mohr for serving as expert raters for Study 2; and Cathie Currie, Kevin Murphy, and Susan Osipow for providing helpful feedback on earlier versions of this report. Correspondence regarding this research should be addressed to Keith James, Department of Psychology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523.

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Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 1992, 22, 7 , pp. 545-566. Copyright 0 1992 by V.H. Winston & Son, Inc. All rights reserved.

546 JAMES, CHEN, AND GOLDBERG

individual and situational characteristics (Amabile, 1983a, 1983b). In the sections that follow, we outline a theory of how one particular individual characteristic, social versus individual orientation, may interact with certain situational factors to influence individuals’ creativity. Two studies in which that theory was tested follow.

Social and Insfrumenfal Dispositions

There is some evidence that some people seem to be primarily socially oriented, and others seem to be primarily instrumentally oriented (Bakan, 1966; Becker, 1973; Crano & Aronoff, 1978; Triandis, 1989). Socially oriented people ”feel positive about accepting ingroup norms” and ”feel concerned about their communities and ingroups” (Triandis, 1989, p. 325). They generally prefer to be with others and frequently act in service of others’ needs and desires. Socially oriented individuals focus on cultural and social norms and rituals, their interpersonal relationships, and their group memberships (Bakan, 1966; Becker, 1973; Paulus, 1983; Triandis, 1989; Weisz, Rothbaum, & Blackburn, 1984).

Instrumentally oriented people “feel ambivalent and even bitter about accepting ingroup norms” and “find it completely natural to ’do their own thing‘ and disregard the needs of community, family, or work group” (Triandis, 1989, p. 325). Their primary concern is personal achievement and individual power; most activities which give them pleasure are either done solo or involve controlling rather than inter- acting with others (Becker, 1973). Instrumentally oriented people focus on personal values and possessions or individual skills and successes (Bakan, 1966; Becker, 1973; Triandis, 1989).

In the organizational literature, these orientations have frequently been linked to leadership (e.g., Fiedler, 1967); group interactions and performance (e.g., Bales, 1950; Hare, 1976); and style of conflict management (Thomas, 1976), among other things. Especially relevant to this paper, Chusmir and Kolberg (1986) have produced correlational evidence that managerial creativity is partially determined by which of these orientations dominates an individual’s personality.

A number of theorists (e.g., McGrath & Altman, 1966; Shaw, 1973) have discussed how tasks, whether creative or not, can be partly classified on the basis of whether they included a significant interpersonal component. More specifically, Becker (1973), Goldberg (1985), and Hendricks, Guilford and Hoepfner (1969) indicate that it may be possible to classify creative tasks and situations as either primarily social or primarily instrumental. Some situations provide the opportunity for

CONFLICT AND CREATIVITY 547

creativity involving people-in, for instance, organizing, motivating, or training them. Creative requirements in other situations focus on inanimate or abstract (material or conceptual) factors. We propose that fit between the social/instrumental inclinations of a person and the social/instrumental characteristics of the task(s) that face that individual will be an important general determinant of creativity.

Creativity Under "NeutraI" and Perceived Conflict Conditions

If, as indicated above, individuals tend to specialize either socially or instrumentally, does this mean that those with a social orientation will normally be relatively creative in dealing with social problems and that those with an instrumental orientation will normally be relatively creative on instrumental problems? We think not. Creativity is fundament- ally different from other aspects of performance. Consistent use of structured systems, schemata, strategies and methods (i.e., algorithms, heuristics, norms, and scripts) to guide cognition and behavior is generally the basis of success on noncreative tasks (Chase & Ericsson, 1982; S.E. Goodman & Hedelmann, 1977; Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982; Margolis, 1987; shank & Abelson, 3977). That is, through observation, experience, and formal training, adults develop a variety of patterns which help to guide their thinking and action. This occurs even in situations and on tasks that they have not specifically encountered before, as long as they have some general similarity to known tasks or situations. As Becker (1973), Amabile (1983b), Guilford (e.g., 1950) and others have pointed out, however, creativity requires a divergence from standard operating procedures, typical associations, common usage, and normal habits.

As von Oech (1990) says, "from a practical standpoint ...y ou have to follow all kinds of rules (to survive and avoid becoming paralyzed by complexity). If, however you are trying to generate new ideas, then ...' follow the rules' can be a mental lock because it means 'think about things only as they are" (p. 60). If we could not rely on existing ideas and learned habits of thought and behavior in most of our activities, we would find ourselves unable to accomplish the many mundane tasks that face each of us each day. Those same existing ideas and habits, however, also hinder creativity by limiting the scope of our perceptions, ideas, and actions.

We argue that people are more likely to develop strong patterns and more likely to consistently put them into practice for issues that are highly important to them than for issues that are less important to them. Thus, taking social orientation as an example, it seems likely that socially


oriented people should learn and more consistently apply proven strategies, algorithms, and heuristics to the task of generating ideas for handling social situations. Because of this, their thinking should normally tend to follow fairly safe and standard lines which should, in turn, mitigate against the originality required for creativity. Those who are relatively low in social orientation, on the other hand, should be less likely to have developed, and less likely to consistently use, patterns of thought and action relative to social issues. As a result, they may be more likely to generate unusual (i.e., novel and, thus, potentially creative) solutions to socially oriented problems. Thus, although a close fit between the social/instrumental characteristics of people and their tasks may enhance many types of performance, there are reasons to believe that divergence between person and task characteristics enhances creativity.

Role of conflict. The relationships described above may be moderated by the presence of conflict. Several researchers and theorists (e.g., Kohler, 1917/1957; Luchins & Luchins, 1959; Rothenberg, 1971; Tardif and Sternberg, 1988) have proposed that creativity may be partially a cognitive reaction to perceptions of conflict or feelings of frustration. That is, such perceptions and feelings may serve as a signal that standard patterns of thinking and behaving are not succeeding; and as a trigger for a search for new and more effective ways of responding. Creativity, while not entirely made up of novelty, does require at least some of it (Amabile, 1983a). Thus, perceptual, mental, and behavioral sets must be broken for creativity to occur (Luchins &I Luchins, 1959). We propose that a perception of conflict is one trigger for set breaking.

Evidence supporting the creativity-triggering effect of conflict comes mainly from case (e.g., Cohn, 1984) and correlational (e.g., L. M. Good- man, 1981) studies. In a laboratory study in which a sense of conflict was artificially created for some groups of college students, James (1990) did find, though, that perceptions of conflict were associated with a significant increase in the creativity of some subjects’ ideas. In line with the theoretical conception presented above, creativity increased in response to perceived conflict when a goal that was congruent with subjects’ general orientation on the social/instrumental dimension was made salient; but not when their attention had been focused on a goal that did not match their orientation. In fact, a salient social goal actually led to lower creativity by instrumental individuals in the conflict condition relative to instrumental individuals in a neutral condition. James (1990) explained this last outcome by arguing that conflict leads to a with- drawal of energy and effort from types of tasks of lesser concern to people and, so, reduces the likelihood of creativity.


Study 1

In James’ (1990) study, a sense of conflict was created artificially in college students by giving them information indicating that after gradu- ating they were likely to experience conflicts between their career and their relationship aspirations. In this study, we attempted to assess with working adults the effects of perceptions of on-the-job conflict for creativity. In addition, we sought to replicate James’ findings with a more direct approach to task type (social or instrumental) in place of his manipulation of the salience of social versus instrumental goals.

Kahn, Wolfe, Quinn, Snolk, and Rosenthal(1964) found that individuals holding creative positions in organizations experience relatively high levels of social conflict. Other research (e.g., MacKinnon, 1962; Goodman, 1981) has indicated a possible relationship between off-the- job conflict experiences and professional creativity. We sought to directly assess the impact of work-related conflicts on creativity of ideas by heightening some subjects’ awareness of conflicts they actually experienced on the job prior to their completion of two creativity measures. Heightened awareness (i.e., salience) of such conflicts should elicit reactions similar to those that would occur in response to direct percep tions of work-related conflict.

Hypotheses

Instrumental persons were expected to be relatively high in social creativity in a neutral condition; social persons were expected to be relatively instrumentally creative in the same condition. It was expected, however, that heightened awareness of conflict would lead to higher creativity on an instrumental task, but decreased creativity on a social task, among instrumental individuals. For social participants, heightened conflict awareness was expected to facilitate socially directed creativity and inhibit instrumental creativity. Thus, the hypothesis was of a two-way interaction of orientation type and task type.

Method

Subjects

The subjects were 46 employees of Columbia University. Twenty-six were female and twenty were male. All were Caucasians. Twenty-five (54%) held administrative positions. Eleven (24%) were in secretarial or clerical jobs. Seven (15%) held technical (e.g., computer programmer;


laboratory technician) posts. Two were accountants and one failed to identify her position.

Material

Assessment of social and instrumental orienfation. Many measures of specific components of individuals’ instrumental and social inclinations have been developed. None of them, however, seem to accurately cap- ture all of the aspects of this construct (Paulus & Martin, 1988). One of the most popular, the self-monitoring scale (Synder, 19741, may be seri- ously psychometrically flawed (Briggs & Cheek, 1988). Another well- known measure, Fiedler’s LPC scale, has been the subject of much controversy (e.g., Vecchio, 1983; Yukl, 1989) concerning its interpretation and utility.

One of the best available ways of measuring social/instrumental orientation may be the Janis-Field Social Inadequacy Inventory (Janis & Field, 1959). Janis and Field labeled their inventory Social Inadequacy and found that individuals with high levels of this variable were relatively susceptible to social persuasion, while low scorers were relatively resistant to persuasion. Moreover, individuals high in social inadequacy had relatively high levels of anxiety about academic tasks, while those low in it had were substantially more relaxed about academic task performance. Subsequent to Janis and Field’s original presentation of this scale, it has been called a self-esteem inventory. Fleming and Watts (19801, however, found that the major factor of the Janis-Field Inventory is social confidence (i.e., social independence). They validated this by showing that Janis-Field Inventory scores (unlike Janis & Fields, Fleming and Watts scored the inventory so that higher scores reflected greater social independence) correlate significantly and negatively with external locus of control, situational anxiety, and empathic fantasy.

One reason that the Janis-Field scale has been treated as a self-esteem inventory is that the concept of self-esteem seems to, itself, largely reflect individuality versus social orientation (Becker, 1973; Fleming & Watts, 1980; Huston, 1983; Sirgy, 1986; Whitley, 1985). Sirgy (1986) and Becker (1973) present theoretical rationales for self-esteem (SE) being a function of orientation type. Whitley (1985) and Huston (1983), in reviews of the self-esteem literature, concluded that past success on instrumental tasks helps produce high self-esteem; while an absence of such a history yields low SE. Thus, subsequent to Janis and Fields original work, this scale has been given the label of a self-esteem inventory, although the construct it measures seems to be the social orientation versus individualism one we are interested in.


On the basis of the literature just outlined, we used a median split in the Janis-Field Inventory to create our social (following Fleming & Waits scoring scheme, those scoring below the median) and instrumental (those scoring above the median) orientation groups in this study.

Conflict. We sought to include the major classes of social conflicts in organizations identified in the literature in our salience-of-conflict manipulation. One important source of conflict in organizations is mul- tiple group or role memberships (Cooper, 1983); a related issue is re- sponsibility for intergroup coordination (known as boundary spanning or linch pinning), which has been linked theoretically and empirically to feelings of conflict, stress and anxiety (Cooper & Marshall, 1976; Kahn, et al., 1964). Boundary-spanning and role-conflict effects can occur either entirely on the job or between work and nonwork (i.e., family) aspects of life (Cooper, 1983). Other sources of conflict in an organization included were clashes with one’s supervisor and problems with one’s co-workers (Baron, 1990; Cooper, 1983). We wrote items which asked subjects to rate the frequency of, and difficulty in handling each of these types of conflict. A 7-point scale was used for these ratings, with 1 defined as never or not difficult (for the frequency of occurrence and difficulty items, respectively) and 7 as very often or very difficult.

Dependent measures. James (1990) used only one abstract creativity test and included a manipulation which directed subjects’ attention to either a major class of social goals or a major class of instrumental goals just before they completed it to try to influence perceptions of the domain of the task. Although this yielded results which were congruent with the theory presented in the general introduction, it would clearly be better to directly assess the effects of task type by using separate social and instrumental tasks. We did this in this study.

Of course, measurement of subjects’ actual on-the-job creativity would have been ideal. Given, however, the range of types of positions that the participants held and given that creativity on the job is likely an infrequent occurrence, this would have been extremely difficult. Because of this, we used two abstract, but well-validated, creativity tests.

The social creativity measure was a story-writing task developed by Getzels and Jackson (1962). On this, subjects were asked to write a brief story on the following theme: “Susan and John want to get married.” Because of the nature of this theme, this task was classified as socially oriented. The resulting stories were scored for creativity using a coding scheme validated by Getzels and Jackson (1962, pp. 37-42) as dis- criminating between individuals high and low in day-today creativity. This involved present(l)/absent(O) coding of seven categories of story


content: (a) substantial theme-irrelevant content; (b) unexpected ending (i.e., differing in tone or content from the remainder of the story; (c) presence of humor; (d) presence of incongruity; (el a playful attitude toward the theme; (0 presence of violence; and (g) the direct mention of creative or inventive production. The values from these categories were summed for each subject to produce the social creativity scores. Scoring of the stories was done by two individuals who were blind to subject condition and the hypotheses. The correlation between the social creativity scores produced by the two raters was .63. Though this indicates somewhat less consistency than Getzels and Jackson reported, it does point to substantial agreement between to the two raters’ judgments.

A one-item version of the Alternate Uses test (Christensen, Guilford, Merrifield, & Wilson, 1960), which requires generation of ideas for using particular objects and which was developed and validated as a measure of divergent thinking, was used here as the measure of instrumental creativity. The focus on use of objects puts this task in the instrumental realm. Subjects were asked to list as many different uses for a brick as they could devise.

The most commonly used definition of creativity is the generation of ideas or products which are both novel and useful (Amabile 1983a, 1983b). While creativity is more than just novelty of ideas, novelty has been generally agreed to be a crucial part of creativity. Thus, to assess the creativity of the ideas listed on the Alternate Uses test, the frequency of occurrence of each acceptable response across the entire sample was first counted. The frequencies associated with all of the responses given by a particular subject were summed. Finally, this sum was divided by the number of uses listed by that individual, yielding a score for, on average, how unusual (novel) the ideas she gave were within this sample of subjects. This score was the dependent measure for instrumental creativity; the lower it was, the more creative were the subjects responses on the Alternate Uses test. This procedure is based on the scoring principles for the Alternate Uses test validated by Christensen, et al. (1 960).

Numbers of uses listed were themselves analyzed, and were also used as a covariate in the analysis of originality scores. This allowed assessment of whether creativity was influenced by the grouping variables indirectly through an impact on numbers of ideas generated. Since subjects completed the materials on their own, it was also possible that some might have ignored our 5-minute time limit instructions for each creativity test. It seemed possible that each subject might think first of the most common uses so that ideas occurring to her later and


later in the set would, in general, tend to be more and more unusual. If so, those who listed more ideas either because the grouping variables lead them to think of more things or because they ignored the time limit would have scores indicating greater creativity to their ideas even though this was occurring for reasons other than the process we argue for in the introduction. Using total numbers of uses subjects gave as a covariate in an ANCOVA controlled for these possibilities.

Procedures

All of the measures outlined above were put together on a single questionnaire. There were two versions of this. On one (heightened- awareness condition), the conflict rating items immediately followed some demographic questions and immediately preceded the creativity measures. On the other (neutral condition) the questions about organizational conflict came last; the creativity items came immediately after the demographic questions. Except for the change in position of the conflict questions, the two versions of the questionnaire were identical.

Schwartz and Strack (1981) make a case for using the technique of enhancing the salience of real world variables that cannot be directly manipulated (e.g., in this study we could not directly control the level of actual conflict on the job) as a way of testing their effects. They provided an empirical demonstration of the effectiveness of this methodology. Katz and Hass (1988) and Mark, Sinclair, and Wellens (1991) have also successfully used the strategy of altering the order of questionnaires to create heightened salience of a variable embodied in a particular questionnaire as a way of testing the effects of that variable.

Two hundred and thirty individuals, randomly selected from among all the clerical, technical, and administrative employees listed in the Columbia University directory, were sent the questionnaire. One of the two versions created by the conflict manipulation was randomly assigned to each recipient. A cover letter was composed which stated that the questionnaire was intended to assess the relationship among job stresses, personality characteristics, and employee health as the first phase of a larger work-health project. Anonymity and confidentiality were guaranteed.

The instructions included a request that only 5 minutes be spent on each of the creativity tests, which were described to the subjects as personality measures. Since the survey was self-administered, some may not have adhered to the time limit. However, the creativity scoring schemes used, along with random assignment of subjects to the conflict-awareness conditions, should have precluded confounding


effects due to differences in time spent on these tasks. The back of the last page of each questionnaire had a stamp and the

first authors name and departmental address. In the cover letter, we asked subjects to simply fold the completed questionnaire so that this return address showed, staple or tape it closed, and drop it into a mail box. Forty-six usable questionnaires were returned.

Correcting for questionnaires that the campus mail service was unable to deliver, the response rate among those-who actually received the questionnaire was 26.5%. Though this is relatively low, exactly 23 copies of each version of the questionnaire were returned. Thus, the manipulation did not affect likelihood of responding. Given this and random assignment, the response rate should not affect the test of the effects of the conflict-awareness manipulation, which is the main issue in this study. Response rate is irrelevant because this is an experimental, not a survey, study.

Results and Discussion

Manipulation Check and Preliminary AnaZyses

Two analyses were conducted to determine whether our conflict manipulation affected subjects‘ Janis-Field scores or their Ievel of reported conflict as such outcomes would serve as confounds in inter- preting the results on the primary dependent measures. A test of the impact of the grouping factors on the number of uses subjects listed was also done to examine the possibility of indirect effects on creativity by way of increases in numbers of ideas generated.

AnaZysis of Janis-Field scores and conflict scores. The manipulation had no significant effect on Janis-Field scores, F(1,45) = 1.26, p > .25. The median Janis-Field score was 62. Subjects scoring at or above this were classified as instrumentally oriented; subjects with scores below 62 were classified as socially oriented. In the ANOVA on the summed conflict ratings, none of the effects was significant, all F’s(1,43) I 2.80, p > .lo. Thus, subjects did not report different levels of conflict in the different conditions. As we note below, however, there is evidence that such conflicts were more salient at the time of completion of the creativity measures for subjects who completed the conflict inventory first rather than after all other measures.

Analysis of number of uses. One subject listed no uses, yielding an N of 45 for the scores from this measure. The ANOVA on number of uses listed showed no significant effects, all F‘s(1.42) I -97, p > .25.


Tests of Hypotheses

Analyses of the social crentivity measure. Six subjects failed to complete the story-writing task. All were in the heightened awareness condition- three Instrumental and three Social individuals. A Chi-square analysis of the effects of awareness condition and individual orientation on frequency of responding to the social-creativity test showed only a significant effect of conflict awareness condition, x2 = 6.90, p < .05.

Heightened awareness of social conflicts apparently made it significantly more likely that the subjects would skip the story-writing task. Only one individual skipped the instrumental originality task and no subject failed to complete any of the other items. The person who left the Alternate Uses test blank was in the Social/neutral condition; a Chi-square test on frequency of completion of this item showed no significant effects. We interpret this to indicate that heightened awareness of socially based conflicts made participants more likely to avoid the one measure on the questionnaire which was primarily social in nature. This finding provides additional confirmation of the effectiveness of the manipulation by indicating that high awareness of socially based conflicts yielded a tendency to avoid a socially oriented task.

In the test of the hypothesis regarding social creativity, the ANCOVA results showed only a significant awareness-of-conflict x orientation- type interaction effect, F(1,36) = 5.29, p < .05. The effect size (omega squared) for this interaction was .04.

Mean social originality scores are shown in Table 1. As predicted, social creativity scores were higher for socially oriented subjects than for instrumental subjects under conditions of heightened conflict, but the reverse was true in the low-conflict awareness condition.

Pairwise comparisons of cell means (all tests unidirectional; the cell with the higher mean is always listed first) were then computed. The results showed differences significant at the -10 level between the Social/ heightened awareness and the Social/neutral groups; between the Instrumental/neutral and the Social/neutral groups; and between the instrumental/heightened awareness and the Instrumental/neutral groups. The pattern of these differences matches the pattern proposed in our theory. Given the reduction of degrees of freedom entailed in pairwise cell comparisons, significance at the .10 level seems reasonable, especially given the .05 significance obtained in the two-way ANOVA, the main test of the hypothesis. Thus, our expectations about the effects of the grouping factors on social creativity were supported.


Table 1

Means of Instrumental and Social Originality Scores by Conflict-Awareness Condition and Self-Esteem h e l , Study 2

Conflict Awareness

Heightened Neutral Self-Esteem Level

High Instrumental originality Social originality

Instrumental originality Social originality

Low

8.29 0.43

10.02 1.15

10.33 1.30

7.75 0.50

Note. Lower values indicate higher instrumental creativity; higher values indicate higher social activity. The instrumental scores shown have been corrected for the significant effect of number of uses.

Analyses of the instrumental Creativity measure. The results of the ANCOVA on instrumental originality scores yielded no significant main effects; but did show a significant interaction effect, F(1,40) = 5.40, p < .05. The effect size (omega-squared) for this interaction was .06. Mean instrumental creativity scores are also shown in Table 1.

The summed conflict rating score was not a significant covariate, F(1,40) = 1.62, p > .lo; the number-of-uses score was, however, significant, F(1,40)= 19.07, p c .01. The regression coefficient for the latter effect was -0.28. Increasing numbers of possible uses were associated with increases in their creativity (because of the scoring scheme, lower Uses test scores indicate greater creativity, thus the negative regression coefficient), but conflict and orientation type interacted to significantly affect originality even with the number of uses controlled.

Once again, the pattern of results matched our predictions. Social subjects showed more instrumental creativity than Instrumental subjects in the low-conflict awareness condition, but this pattern was reversed when heightened conflict awareness was induced.

Pairwise comparisons of the cell means showed significant differences between the Social/neutral and the SociaVheightened awareness


groups ( p c .05); and between the Instrumental/neutral and the Social/ neutral groups, ( p < .lo). Neither of the other pairwise comparisons was significant. The best interpretation of the overall pattern of results seems to be that Instrumental individuals responded to heightened awareness of organizational conflict with increased instrumental creativity, whereas the same condition led Social individuals to be less creative.

Thus, as predicted, we have evidence that heightened awareness of organizational conflict seemed to lead Social subjects to exhibit more creativity in socially directed thinking, and Instrumental individuals to exhibit more creativity in instrumentally directed thinking. Creativity, on the other hand was fairly high in the domain (social for instrumental people; instrumental for those who were socially oriented) in which individuals were less invested in the neutral condition; but decreased given heightened conflict awareness.

Study 2

In this study, we focused on social orientation and social creativity and sought to assess how individuals’ degree of social orientation related to their ability to generate creative ideas for addressing a social problem facing their organization. We also shifted to a different measure of orientation type in an effort to demonstrate convergent validity for the measure of social versus instrumental orientation in Study 1. By linking the creativity measure directly to organizational outcomes, we sought to establish the potential importance of the individual-level effects observed by James (1990) and in our first study.

Hypotheses

In line with the theoretical conception presented in the general introduction and the results of Study 1, we expected that given relatively low levels of perceived conflict, individuals relatively low in social orientation would exhibit higher creativity than those with a relatively high social orientation. If conflict were introduced, though, we expected socially oriented individuals to abandon standard patterns of thinking and generate more creative ideas for dealing with a social issue, whereas instrumentally oriented individuals were expected to react to heightened conflict awareness by withdrawing their energies from the social realm and, thus, to exhibit relatively low creativity on the same social problem. Thus, the hypothesis again called for a two-way interaction of conflict awareness condition and individual orientation.


Method

Subjects

The subjects were 57 minority students from introductory psychology classes at a large western university. Thirty-one were male and 26 were female. Sixteen (28.1%) were Afro-American; 11 (19.3%) were Asian-American; 24 (42.1%) were Mexican-American; and 6 (10.5%) were Native-American. Minority subjects were used to test the gener- ality of Study 1 here and of James’ (1990) study which used Caucasian workers and Caucasian students, respectively.

Materials and Procedures

Conflict manipulation. As in Study 1, conflict perceptions were manipulated using a questionnaire on which subjects rated the extent to which several different types of conflict (e.g., conflict between the subject‘s values and those of the majority of students; conflict with parents; conflict with boyfriend or girlfriend; conflict with roommate[sl) existed in their lives. Half of the subjects (randomly assigned) completed this questionnaire before performing the creativity task; the other half completed a neutral task (choosing letters to fill blanks in obscure non- English words) before the creativity task.

Social-orientution grouping variable. In this study we moved to a measure which was developed to measure one specific component of social and instrumental (individualistic) tendencies-Paulus’s (1983) Sphere- Specific Locus of Control inventory. Paulus (1983; see also Rothbaum, Weisz & Synder, 1982) argued that earlier locus of control scales mixed together a number of distinct ways of attempting to assert control in life such that the construct was confounded. He therefore developed his own locus of control inventory which yields separate scores for three types of control: individual, social, and political. Reliability and validity data for these scores are presented in Paulus (1983).

Participants completed Paulus’ social and individual locus scales. We then subtracted each individual’s score on the individual-locus scale from that person’s score on the social-locus scale to create a single score reflecting whether social control tendencies or individual (instrumental) control tendencies were preeminent. We used a median split on this combined score to divide subjects into low and high social orientation groups.

Dependent measure. In James’ (1990) study and in Study 1 in this paper, abstract creativity tests were used to assess the effects of conflict and


orientation type. Here, we sought to assess creativity in a more realistic fashion and in a way that tied individual creativity to an organizational problem. To do this we looked for a real problem that would be relevant both to our subjects and to the success of the university of which they were a part. After discussions with a number of undergraduate and graduate students, we settled on the issue of students’ social lives in the small city surrounded by an agricultural county where the university at which the data were collected is located. We gave the subjects 5 minutes to address the following problem:

Many of (the universityys students are unhappy with the social activities available at the university and in (the college town). Some have suggested that (the university) has trouble attracting some of the undergraduate and graduate students it would like to have because there is a perception that this is not an exciting place to be. The administration of the university has decided to increase the budget for student activities. What new activities and events do you think would not only be of interest to current students, but could also be used as selling points for attracting new students? Think especially about events that would be unique and make (the university) stand out among the many universities in the country. Be as specific and clear as you can about what each thing you suggest would involve and why it would be attractive.

Amabile (1982; 1983a) has demonstrated that expert ratings Ke., successful artists’ ratings of artistic productions; published poets’ ratings of poetry) of creativity are an effective way to assess it. We used this approach in this study and recruited the president of the university‘s student government and the student government‘s Director of Student Activities to rate the ideas the subjects produced. While there is no evidence that these raters were particularly creative themselves, they were highly familiar with the types of activities for students currently being put on at their own and other universities. Thus, they were well positioned to judge whether suggestions for new activities were or were not creative.

Their ratings were done on a 1 to 10 scale where 1 meant that the rater thought the ideas given by a subject were not creative at all and 10 meant that he or she thought they were extremely creative. The raters evaluated the subjects’ responses separately and did not discuss them.

The median for the difference between the social and the individual locus scores was -1. Individuals scoring above this value formed the


Table 2

Means and Standard Deviations of Creativity Ratings in Four Conflict Salience and Social Orientation Cells, Study 2

Conflict Salience Condition Social Orientation Level

Neutral High

Low X 13.58 X 11.50 SD 2.31 SD 3.44 n = 14 n = 14

High X 12.00 X 13.50 SD 4.46 SD 3.08 n = 1 7 n = 1 2

Note. Higher scores indicate higher rated creativity of ideas.

high social orientation group. Those scoring at or below it formed the low social orientation group.

Results

Interrater Reliability

The creativity ratings from the two raters were correlated to assess interrater reliability. This yielded a correlation value of .68. This indicated substantial similarity between the two ratings. We therefore summed them into one score for each subject.

Tests of Hypotheses

An ANOVA was carried out on the summed creativity scores with conflict-salience condition and the orientation-type median split as the grouping factors. There was a significant two way interaction of conflict salience and the social orientation median split, F(1,49) = 4.38, p < .05. The other effects were not significant.

The means and standard deviations for the four cells created by the significant two-way interaction are shown in Table 2. As in Study 1,


when conflict was not salient, creativity was higher on this social task among students who scored low in social orientation. When existing conflicts were cognitively prominent, however, this pattern was reversed. Pairwise comparisons of cells yielded no significant effects (all p’s > .lo). This is partially due to low power but also partially attributable to the fact that the crossover interaction predicted and supported in the ANOVA results involves a pattern for all four cells at once. The interaction accounted for 4% of the variance in creativity scores in this study.

Discussion

The significant interaction of the conflict-salience manipulation and social orientation in the ANOVA on the creativity scores supported the hypothesis. For individuals low in social orientation, social creativity was relatively high under neutral circumstances and relatively low when conflict-salience was heightened. Those high in social orientation were relatively low in social creativity in a neutral condition; but high in social creativity given heightened conflict awareness.

General Discussion

Study 2 was a conceptual replication of Study 1 in which the orientation measure, the subject group, and the creativity measures were all altered and yet essentially the same pattern of results held. Moreover, the results of both Study 1 and Study 2 converge with the outcome of James’ (1990) study in which entirely different manipulations and measures were used. This convergence provides good evidence of the validity of the theory, measures, and manipulations used in this research.

While the effects of the grouping variables were not large in these two studies, several things should be kept in mind when evaluating the effect sizes. First, the problem that subjects were given in Study 2 was a complicated one, whereas the tasks in Study 1 were unfamiliar ones. In addition the time available to subjects to generate ideas was very limited. Second, the conflict-salience manipulations involved conflicts unrelated to the problems at hand rather than involvement in a conflict-laden situation tied to the issue the respondents were attempting to address. Third, there are no doubt a number of other situational and individual variables that are important to creativity which were not controlled in this study and which may have limited the impact of the variables examined.

Finally, even a 6% or a 4% increase in creativity might be highly important if it led to ideas of use in solving a problem of importance to


individual or organizational success or survival. Effect sizes cannot be evaluated in the abstract; one cannot conclude that "this one is important because it's big" or "that one is unimportant because it's small" in a general sort of way. "Big" and "small" depends upon the importance of the issue to which the effect size is tied; and the utility of a given explanation of a particular phenomenon relative to competing expla- nations.

The results of Study 2 demonstrate how creativity can be important to the ability of organizations to deal with problems that could affect their success. Thus, this research helps add to our knowledge of the forces that help shape individuals' performances and how such performances relate to organizational outcomes.

The results of this research may have important implications for theory, application, and future research. For instance, these studies generally reinforce the idea that the social/instrumental dimension is of importance to individual and organizational outcomes. Another general implication is that if creativity is desired, it is important to consider both individual and situational characteristics. More specifically, all other things being equal, if the situation is relatively benign, it is may be best to give individuals things to deal with which fall outside of their primary orientation. That is, put highly socially oriented individuals to work on instrumental problems and highly instrumentally oriented individuals to work on social problems. If, however, a particular role, job or situation is likely to involve significant conflict (which Kahn et al., 1964, indicate is true of some types of jobs and roles in organizations) and creativity is desired, it would might best to put individuals in them whose orientations fit with the nature of the tasks tied to that position. On the other hand, were noncreative types of performance (i.e., speed or accuracy) most important to a particular position, then the recommendations given above would be reversed.

Another implication of the results of this study is to reiterate a point about conflict that has frequently been made (e.g., Deustch, 1973; Robbins, 1974) but is still too much ignored: that conflict can potentially have either positive or negative consequences. Many people continue to regard conflict as destructive and, thus, something to be avoided or minimized whenever possible. Our research indicates that conflict can either enhance or diminish creativity, depending on other factors, just as others have argued that it can have either positive or negative implications for other outcomes.

The current results also point to the need for some additional research. One issue that should be addressed in future studies is how thinking is affected to produce the type of results observed here. That is,


we need to directly examine the cognitive mechanisms that mediate the kinds of variations in creativity observed here. We argued that the operations of existing cognitive structures and patterns may inhibit creativity and that conflict may cause processing to follow alternate channels, leading to creativity. We did not, however, directly examine the processing changes posited to mediate the impact of conflict on creativity.

A related question for future research is whether creativity and the more "mundane" aspects of performance (e.g., speed, accuracy) neces- sarily contradict each other. The implication of the ideas we developed in the introduction is that they do. It may be, however, that high levels of both are possible given the right individuals and the right circumstances.

Finally, it would be useful to know whether these results would hold for narrower types of orientations and across the range of levels of perceived conflict. On the first point would, for instance, a quantitative orientation (i.e., a preference for numbers over words and a perception of and investment in personal quantitative skill) mitigate against quantitative creativity in relatively neutral conditions but interact with conflict to enhance it? Or are the effects observed here limited to the broad social and instrumental domains we examined? On the second issue, is the effect of perceived conflict on creativity linear, or might an extremely strong sense of conflict be so disruptive as to inhibit creativity? All of the foregoing are issues of importance that require creative investigation.

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