Personality and the creativity of frontline service employees: linear and curvilinear effects

Abstract

Previous studies have investigated the relationship between the Five-Factor model of personality and creativity. As this model has been criticised for providing a limited account of an individual’s personality, this study considers additional personality traits that have recently been investigated in the literature as determinants of employee behaviour. Moreover, we also contribute to the existing body of literature by conducting this study in a service setting, for which we predict personality traits will exert differentiated effects on creativity when compared to other settings. Finally, while past research has focused on linear effects, this study examines the existence of non-linear effects between personality and creativity. The results indicate that personality traits apart from the Five-Factor model have an impact on creativity and that the effects of several personality traits on the creativity of frontline service employees differ from those obtained in other settings. Lastly, the findings also show that five of the personality traits have non-linear effects on creativity, and this may be a stimulus for a new stream of research in the human resources literature.     

Ensuring creative approaches in information system design

Improvement in computing capability is one way to aid US companies in recapturing competitive edge. The easy applications have been computerized; the difficult ones lie ahead. Creative approaches are needed to computerize those difficult applications. Yet IS has apparently little interest in the subject of creativity; less than a half-dozen articles on the subject have been published in the 35-year history of the discipline. The author reviewed the literature in other disciplines of art, science, engineering, psychology and education, to determine how creativity techniques had been utilized in those disciplines. The research revealed that many of those techniques are useful for the IS field. Definitions of creativity are provided, then three classifications of creativity research are reviewed: Rothenberg, Ackoff/Vergara, and Rosner/Abt. Creativity techniques are illustrated for general problem solving. The author advocates the use of creativity techniques in the information system development process at four points: near the conclusion of requirements definition, logical design, physical design and program design. Use of creativity techniques at each of these points is illustrated. By delaying convergence on a solution, new approaches and new alternatives can be generated and evaluated. These approaches can produce the systems needed to assist US companies in international competition.     

The distinctiveness of the European tradition in entrepreneurship research

Several previous studies have investigated creativity as an enhancer of innovation, their results showing that there is a positive relationship between the organizational creative climate and innovation. However, no research has been conducted on whether there is a saturation point beyond which an increase in creativity makes innovation performance decrease. In this article, we question the traditional positive relationship between creativity and innovation, and suggest that such a relationship is not linear, but has instead an inverted U-shape due to a saturation effect. We have developed a conceptual model to explain innovation performance considering creativity and network centrality, and it has been tested in the ceramic industrial cluster in Spain. Empirical findings support the inverted U-shaped relationship between creativity and innovation. The implications of these results in relation to creativity and innovation theory and practices are discussed.     

Identifying and Managing Creative Tasks in Collaborative IS Research Projects

Collaborative research projects require a high amount of creativity to create innovative results. Project management has to ensure that it recognizes and encourages creativity. This can be done successfully only if the nature of creative tasks is well understood. The current literature on creativity provides a well‐accepted model to characterize creativity. Based on a literature review and case study we transfer the findings into the context of collaborative information systems (IS) research projects and we evaluate their applicability. We derive specific criteria and characteristics for the identification of creative tasks, find a set of different task types, and provide implications directly usable by project managers.     

Investigating the link between managers' green knowledge and leadership style,and their firms' environmental performance: The mediation role of green creativity

Despite extensive literature on green hotel management and sustainability, scant attention has been given on the role of managers to solve environmental related issues. This study's aim is to assess the effects of managers' green knowledge and green transformational leadership on firms' environmental performance with the mediating effect of green creativity. The study analyzes the perceptions of 363 employees in different managerial positions of the hotel industry employing Partial Last Square Structural Equation Modeling. The findings of the study show a positive effect of green knowledge and green transformational leadership on green creativity and green transformational leadership on environmental performance. Furthermore, green creativity is also found to have significant mediating effect between green knowledge and environmental performance, and green transformational leadership and environmental performance relations. The main implication of the current research is that managers' green concerns might help the stakeholders in the hotel industry to respond through appropriate green initiatives for their organizations. Further suggestions for literature and practice are discussed.     

Coupling High Self-Perceived Creativity and Successful Newcomer Adjustment in Organizations: The Role of Supervisor Trust and Support for Authentic Self-Expression

This study addresses how supervisors can facilitate the socialization of newcomers with high self-perceived creativity into their new jobs. We combine self-verification theory and current literature on socialization in a dual-stage moderated mediation model where a) newcomer self-perceived creativity interacts with supervisor trust in the newcomer to trigger supervisor perception of newcomer creativity; and b) supervisor perception of newcomer creativity, in turn, interacts with supervisor support for newcomer authentic self-expression to impact newcomer adjustment outcomes (i.e., task performance, job satisfaction, and stress symptoms). A two-wave, multisource study of 146 newcomer–supervisor dyads provides support for our predictions, suggesting that high levels of supervisor trust and support for authentic self-expression serve as moderating conditions allowing supervisor perception of newcomer creativity to positively mediate the relationship between newcomer self-perceived creativity and newcomer adjustment.     

Critical creativity criteria for students in higher education: taking the interrelationship effect among dimensions into account

It is known that the overall competitive advantages enjoyed by the Taiwanese higher education system have been decreasing in recent years relative to the educational systems of other countries. In light of aiming to become a kingdom of innovation, how to regain its competitive advantages over the very short term has become a critical issue requiring immediate attention. Based on previous research indicating that improving innovation is among the primary ways of enhancing an education system’s competitive advantages, that creativity is the foundation of innovation, that organizations that truly understand human creativity and are committed to nurturing it and living with the consequences of doing so are those that are most likely to succeed, and that students are a major group to be regarded as the backbone of a nation’s future development, the aim of this study is to explore critical criteria for creativity, which could significantly improve the creativity of college students. Although related studies can be found today, these studies seem to ignore the different effects of different dimensions of creativity evaluation, leading to results that are irrational and not completely suitable for real practice. In this regard, a perception of interrelationships among these dimensions is thus taken into account while calculating weights of evaluation creativity dimensions and criteria. In accordance with the result, the top six explored critical creativity criteria are shown to help enhance today’s college students’ creativity.     

Creativity and social alienation: the costs of being creative

Although creativity is a widely praised merit, the psychological costs that an employee may pay for being creative are less examined. The present study advances the research paradigm on the dark side of creativity by focusing on the negative psychological state (social alienation) of creative employees. By building on the studies on the homophily principle and on the cultural perspective of creativity, we investigated why creative employees are more likely to experience social alienation. Drawing on the social capital theory, we point out that social alienation of creative employees depends on their networking ability and harmony enhancement motive. A two-wave survey among 311 employees from 59 Chinese organizations supported the hypotheses. Implications of the findings are discussed for creativity and alienation literature as well as management practice.     

A review of TRIZ,and its benefits and challenges in practice

TRIZ (the theory of inventive problem solving) has been promoted by several enthusiasts as a systematic methodology or toolkit that provides a logical approach to developing creativity for innovation and inventive problem solving.The methodology, which emerged from Russia in the 1960s, has spread to over 35 countries across the world. It is now being taught in several universities and it has been applied by a number of global organisations who have found it particularly useful for spurring new product development. However, while its popularity and attractiveness appear to be on a steady increase, there are practical issues which make the use of TRIZ in practice particularly challenging. These practical difficulties have largely been neglected by TRIZ literature.This paper takes a step away from conventional TRIZ literature, by exploring not just the benefits associated with TRIZ knowledge, but the challenges associated with its acquisition and application based on practical experience. Through a survey, first-hand information is collected from people who have tried (successfully and unsuccessfully) to understand and apply the methodology. The challenges recorded cut across a number of issues, ranging from the complex nature of the methodology to underlying organisational and cultural issues which hinder its understanding and application. Another contribution of this paper, potentially useful for TRIZ beginners, is the indication of what tools among the several contained in the TRIZ toolkit would be most useful to learn first, based on their observed degree of usage by the survey respondents.     

Food fight! Immigrant Street Vendors,Gourmet Food Trucks and the Differential Valuation of Creative Producers in Chicago

Immigrant street vendors in Chicago have fought for decades without success to change the restrictive and punitive city ordinance governing their work. The failure of the immigrant street vendors stands in marked contrast to the successful efforts of gourmet food truck entrepreneurs, who within only two years convinced the Chicago City Council to pass an ordinance permitting their work. The differential regulation of street vending reveals how local politicians use the rhetoric of the ‘creative’ city to justify building a city that appeals to young urban professionals, while simultaneously marginalizing the possibilities of working‐class immigrants to shape the city to their desires. This article aims to add to the literature on the politics of the creative class by demonstrating how discourses of creativity and entrepreneurialism get mobilized by competing interests, and how racial‐ethnic attitudes become integral to these discourses. The contrasting experiences of the vendors force us to ask: Why is the creativity of food truck entrepreneurs valued over the creativity of street vendors when, according to Richard Florida, creative class cities are supposed to be tolerant and immigrant‐friendly? Whose ‘creativity’ gets to be part of the ‘creative’ city? I draw on interviews with street vendors and a discourse analysis of media coverage of vending debates.     

Managing Creative People: Strategies and Tactics for Innovation

With rapid changes in technology, and global competition, the success of many organizations has become progressively more dependent on their ability to bring innovative products to market. Ultimately, however, innovation depends on the generation of creative, new ideas. Accordingly, the literature bearing on the nature of creativity is reviewed to identify the conditions that influence innovation. Observations about the nature of creativity are used to draw conclusions about the kind of human resource management strategies that might enhance creativity. It is argued that organizations should consider multiple interventions that take into account the individual, the group, the organization, and the strategic environment when selecting interventions intended to enhance creativity.     

The Creativity‐Performance Relationship: How Rewarding Creativity Moderates the Expression of Creativity

Researchers have argued that creativity is intrinsically motivated, and that rewarding creativity can stifle creativity. Using a sample of 310 employees reporting to 50 different supervisors, we instead show that rewarding creativity influences the relationship between creativity and performance by changing the nature of expressed creativity. We do this by examining novelty and usefulness as separate dimensions. High perceived reward enhances the relationship between novelty and performance while diminishing the relationship between usefulness and performance. The moderating effect of reward for creativity on the relationship between creativity and performance was not observed when we operationalized creativity as an integrated, unidimensional construct. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Principles and Applications of Multilevel Modeling in Human Resource Management Research

Multilevel modeling is important for human resource management (HRM) research in that it often analyzes and interprets hierarchal data residing at more than one level of analysis. However, HRM research in general lags behind other disciplines, such as education, health, marketing, and psychology in the use of a multilevel analytical strategy. This article integrates the most recent literature into the theoretical and applied basics of multilevel modeling applicable to HRM research. A range of multilevel modeling issues have been discussed and they include statistical logic underpinning multilevel modeling, level conceptualization of variables, data aggregation, hypothesis tests, reporting mediation paths, and cross‐level interactions. An empirical example concerning complex cross‐level mediated moderation is presented that will suffice to illustrate the principles and the procedures for implementing a multilevel analytical strategy in HRM research. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Task Conflict and Employee Creativity: The Critical Roles of Learning Orientation and Goal Congruence

We add to human resource literature by investigating how the contribution of task conflict to employee creativity depends on employees’ learning orientation and their goal congruence with organizational peers. We postulate a positive relationship between task conflict and employee creativity and predict that this relationship is augmented by learning orientation but attenuated by goal congruence. We also argue that the mitigating effect of goal congruence is more salient among employees who exhibit a low learning orientation. Our results, captured from employees and their supervisors in a large, Mexican‐based organization, confirm these hypotheses. The findings have important implications for human resource managers who seek to foster creativity among employees. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Multiple pairwise comparison procedures based on the Lin and Wang test for right censored survival data

When comparing the prognosis of more than two groups in clinical trials, researchers may use multiple comparison procedures to determine which treatments actually differ from one another. Methods of controlling the Family Wise Error (FWE) rate for multiple comparisons of survival curves have received attention in the statistical literature. Adjustments such as Bonferroni, Holm's, Steele's and the closed procedure based on the logrank test have been studied. If hazards cross, the adjustments based on the logrank test may not be the most appropriate. Chi (2005) developed multiple testing procedures based on weighted Kaplan–Meier statistics as these statistics may perform better than the logrank for non‐proportional hazards alternatives. The aim of this research is to propose multiple testing procedures based on the Lin and Wang (2004) statistic for all pairwise comparisons. Simulation studies have shown this statistic can be more powerful than the logrank for certain crossing hazards. Through simulation, the FWE rate and power of the Bonferroni and Holm's adjustments based on the Lin and Wang statistic will be studied. For comparison purposes, the same adjustment procedures based on the logrank and Wilcoxon will be included in the simulations. These methods are applied to data from the Bone marrow transplant registry.     

Creating space for play/invention – concepts of space and organizational entrepreneurship

This paper focuses on how one can relate management thinking/practices to entrepreneurial processes in the context of formal organization. In order to do this we develop a number of related ‘spatial concepts’ providing us with the possibility of describing entrepreneurship as a ‘creation and use of space for play/innovation’. Using concepts of space, the managerial and the entrepreneurial dimensions and perspectives on organizing creativity become highly visible in the case studied. This is a field study (within the ethnographic tradition) focusing on an organizational transformation of a former public authority into a competitive limited company. A distinction between managerialism and ‘entrepreneurship as event’ is proposed as conceptually fruitful as well as useful for discussing recommendations to managers for how to handle entrepreneurial processes. A minimal and contextual role for management is suggested when aspiring to support the creations of space for play/invention, for example, for entrepreneurship as forms of organizational creativity.     

Methods for Handling Dropouts in Longitudinal Clinical Trials

This paper focuses on the monotone missing data patterns produced by dropouts and presents a review of the statistical literature on approaches for handling dropouts in longitudinal clinical trials. A variety of ad hoc procedures for handling dropouts are widely used. The rationale for many of these procedures is not well-founded and they can result in biased estimates of treatment comparisons. A fundamentally difficult problem arises when the probability of dropout is thought to be related to the specific value that in principle should have been obtained; this is often referred to as informative or non-ignorable dropout. Joint models for the longitudinal outcomes and the dropout times have been proposed in order to make corrections for non-ignorable dropouts. Two broad classes of joint models are reviewed: selection models and pattern-mixture models. Finally, when there are dropouts in a longitudinal clinical trial the goals of the analysis need to be clearly specified. In this paper we review the main distinctions between a 'pragmatic' and an 'explanatory' analysis. We note that many of the procedures for handling dropouts that are widely used in practice come closest to producing an explanatory rather than a pragmatic analysis.     

Does pay for individual performance truly undermine employee creativity? The different moderating roles of vertical and horizontal collectivist orientations

The extant literature has generated inconclusive findings concerning the effect of pay for individual performance (PFIP) on creativity. Supplementing self-determination theory with compensation-activation theory, we theorized and tested the moderating roles of individual cultural values of vertical and horizontal collectivist orientations on the relationship between PFIP and employee creativity as mediated by intrinsic motivation. The empirical results of two field studies provided convergent support for the intrinsic motivation mechanism underlying the positive relationship between PFIP and employee creativity among individuals with high vertical (but not horizontal) collectivist orientations. These findings highlight the importance of considering individual differences in cultural values in understanding how extrinsic rewards affect creativity.     

The Organizational Life of an Idea: Integrating Social Network,Creativity and Decision‐Making Perspectives*

abstract Existing theories on the influence of social networks on creativity focus on idea generation. Conversely, the new product development literature concentrates more on the selection of ideas and projects. In this paper we bridge this gap by developing a dynamic framework for the role of social networks from idea generation to selection. We apply findings from creativity and behavioural decision‐making literature and present an in‐depth understanding of the sociological processes in the front‐end of the new product development process. Our framework builds on the importance of mutual understanding, sensemaking and consensus formation. The propositions focus on both network structure and content and highlight the need to have strong ties and prior related knowledge, to incorporate decision makers, and to move over time from a large, non‐redundant and heterogeneous to a smaller and more cohesive network structure. We conclude with a discussion on empirical validation of the framework and possible extensions.     

The Ratatouille paradox. An inductive study of creativity in haute cuisine

Organization literature has extensively explored the crucial role of creativity in enabling organizations to survive in fast-paced environments. However, there are still substantial misunderstandings about the way in which creative processes unfold. In most studies, creativity has been analyzed using a compositional sequential model. Building on interpretive inductive research, conducted in the empirical field of Italian haute cuisine, this study develops a framework for the following creative processes, emerging within the field: improvisation, experimentation, trial-and-error, and imagination. The main difference between these processes is the relationship between four aggregate dimensions: process triggers, planning, the unfolding of creative phases, and trialing. This new framework offers a more comprehensive understanding of creativity as it is enacted, shedding light on its real potential in contemporary organizations.C: In every dish, Chef Gusteau always has something unexpected. I will show you. I memorized all his recipes.L: Always do something unexpected.C: No. Follow the recipe.L: But you just said that…C: No, no, no. It was his job to be unexpected. It is our job to… Follow the recipe. (“Ratatouille,” min. 43, Pixar, 2007)C: What are you doing? You are supposed to be preparing the Gusteau recipe.L: This is the recipe.C: The recipe does not call for white truffle oil! What else have you…? You are improvising? This is no time to experiment. The customers are waiting! (“Ratatouille,” min. 48, Pixar, 2007)