Tag Archives: employee creativity

Creativity at Work…Through Increased Workplace Structure?

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Topic: Creativity, Strategic HR, Stress
Publication: Human Resource Management (NOV/DEC 2010)
Article: Does Structuring of Human Resource Management Process Enhance Employee Creativity? The Mediating Role of Psychological Availability
Authors: G. Binyamin, A. Carmeli
Reviewed By: Lauren A. Wood

The environment of the modern workplace is increasingly becoming more dynamic and unstable leading employees to perceive high levels of work-related stress. To battle this increased uncertainty in the external environment and provide a sense of stability to employees, organizations are looking internally at the way human resources processes are designed. Structuring of HRM processes consists of 7 essential dimensions: strategic alignment with organizational goals, managerial engagement, employee job functions structured and evaluated based on a job analysis, clarity of HRM policies and evaluation criteria, planning, flexibility, and internal consistency or synergy of all processes. Structuring HR around these 7 dimensions was shown to help alleviate employee stress perceptions by decreasing feelings of uncertainty.    

Despite these positive outcomes, intuitively, it seems that by providing a structured work place, employee creativity (an indispensable factor for knowledge work) would decrease. However, as the authors of the current study show, this does not appear to be the case – because structuring HRM processes around the 7 dimensions decreased perceived employee stress and uncertainty, employees’ psychological availability (psychological recourses an employee can allocate to a given situation) was freed-up, allowing room for higher-order cogitative processes like creativity.

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Creativity by Committee

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Topic: Creativity
Publication: Academy of Management Journal (APR 2009)
Article: A cross-level perspective on employee creativity: goal orientation, team learning behavior, and individual creativity
Authors: G. Hirst, D. Van Kippenberg and J. Zhou
Reviewed by: Katie Bachman

In most cases, employee creativity is as much of a necessity for companies as competent management or copy machines—it’s the only way business can get done. New research has evaluated the impact of work climate on employee creativity and the results have some interesting implications for organizations.

According to this research, team-level learning behavior (i.e. the encouragement of learning, exploring, and innovating) is crucial for creative expression by members at an individual level. For employees who already have a learning orientation, teams that encourage learning and creative expression gain a lot over teams that have low levels of learning behavior. Even for employees with an approach performance orientation, (i.e., individuals who are motivated by achieving good performance on external indicators of knowledge or skill) team learning behavior encourages people to be creative so as to show themselves in a positive light. The only situation in which creative performance remains stable over different levels of team learning behavior is for those with a performance avoidant orientation (i.e., individuals who are motivated by avoiding poor performance on external indicators of knowledge or skill). These employees are unlikely to innovate because they will not want to show weakness or uncertainty.

Learning behaviors can be supported at higher organization levels and trickle down to the worker. For managers, this research means that encouraging team learning behaviors helps most employees and won’t hurt anyone. So, let the brainstorming begin!

Hirst, G., Van Knippenberg, D., & Zhou, J. (2009). A cross-level perspective on employee creativity: goal orientation, team learning behavior, and individual creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 52, 280-293.

Creativity by Committee

Reply

Topic: Creativity
Publication: Academy of Management Journal (APR 2009)
Article: A cross-level perspective on employee creativity: goal orientation, team learning behavior, and individual creativity.
Authors: G. Hirst, D. Van Kippenberg and J. Zhou
Reviewed by: Katie Bachman

In most cases, employee creativity is as much of a necessity for companies as competent management or copy machines—it’s the only way business can get done. New research has evaluated the impact of work climate on employee creativity and the results have some interesting implications for organizations.

According to this research, team-level learning behavior (i.e. the encouragement of learning, exploring, and innovating) is crucial for creative expression by members at an individual level. For employees who already have a learning orientation, teams that encourage learning and creative expression gain a lot over teams that have low levels of learning behavior. Even for employees with an approach performance orientation, (i.e., individuals who are motivated by achieving good performance on external indicators of knowledge or skill) team learning behavior encourages people to be creative so as to show themselves in a positive light. The only situation in which creative performance remains stable over different levels of team learning behavior is for those with a performance avoidant orientation (i.e., individuals who are motivated by avoiding poor performance on external indicators of knowledge or skill). These employees are unlikely to innovate because they will not want to show weakness or uncertainty.

Learning behaviors can be supported at higher organization levels and trickle down to the worker. For managers, this research means that encouraging team learning behaviors helps most employees and won’t hurt anyone. So, let the brainstorming begin!

Hirst, G., Van Knippenberg, D., & Zhou, J. (2009). A cross-level perspective on
employee creativity: goal orientation, team learning behavior, and individual
creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 52, 280-293.