SUMMARY COURSE 3.5:
ORGANISATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
BY ROWAN MOELIJKER
YEAR 2018/2019
POSITIVE & ORGANISATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
ERASMUS SCHOOL OF SOCIAL AND BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCES
,PROBLEM 4: CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION
LEARNING GOALS
4.1 GORG: A new era
What is innovation?
What is creativity?
In what ways can organisations promote creativity and innovation?
What theories exist on innovation and creativity within an organisation?
What are the individual impediments and facilitators of innovation and creativity?
4.2. Utilise all triggers of creativity
How do unfavourable factors stimulate creativity and innovation?
4.3. The creative “rebel”
What is the link between deviant behaviour and innovation/creativity?
GENERAL LITERATURE
BOOK CHAPTER 1: JEX, S.M. & BRITT., T.W. (2014). CHAPTER 5 (ONLY INNOVATION: P. 167-
173). IN ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY: A SCIENTIST-PRACTITIONER APPROACH (PP. 167–173).
WILEY.
Innovation and Adaptability in Organisations
Although no standard definition of innovation exists, this form of productive behaviour may be thought of as
instances in which employees come up with very novel ideas or concepts that further the goals of the
organisation.
A description of Innovation as a Type of Job Performance
Organisation ideation: the process of creating useful conceptual novelty, and the circulation and taking on of
that novelty in an organisation.
In the organisational innovation literature, there are four distinct streams of research.
1. For the first stream, some researchers have examined the process by which employees come up with
innovative ideas; others are more interested in determining the characteristics that distinguish highly
innovative employees from other. In both cases, the focus is on the employee or employees responsible for the
innovation.
2. For the second stream, innovation is viewed from a more macro perspective; that is, many innovation
researchers focus on what is described as the diffusion of innovations throughout an organisation. An example
of this might be the manner in which computers come to be utilised company wide.
3. For the third stream, innovation researchers tend to focus on what can be described as the adaption of
innovations. The focus is on an organisation’s initial decision on whether to adopt some innovation.
4. Finally, a fourth stream emphasizes the importance of individuals and organisations in innovation.
The study of innovation in organisations is also addressed through research on employee creativity, in that the
ability for employees to creatively address challenges for organisations can translate into innovative
performance.
Employee Attirbutes that Contribute to Creativity and Innovation
According to Amabile, several variables are predictive of creative production in individuals. Because creativity
and innovation are closely linked, these variables are also relevant to predicting innovation in organisational
settings:
Task relevant skills: to be creative, an individual must have a high level of general mental ability, but
must also have more specific abilities. Specific knowledge and technical skills are dependent on a
, certain level of general mental ability. Often however, individuals must acquire these through some
type of formal education. Despite the importance of task-relevant skills, many people possess them
but do not produce creative, innovative work.
Creativity-relevant skills: are essentially meta-skills that individuals use in the creative process. One
crucial skill in the creative process is a cognitive style that is conducive to creativity. Creative people
are able to understand the complexities in a problem and are able to break set during problem solving
(seeing a problem from multiple perspectives and deviate from a perspective). Another important
creativity-relevant skills is a work style that is conducive to creativity. Creative people are able to
concentrate their efforts on a given problem for long periods of time (creativity requires hard work).
Another aspect of work style is productive forgetting – the ability to abandon unproductive searches,
and temporarily put aside stubborn problems.
Task motivation:
Although researchers have been unable to isolate a creative personality, some personality traits do seem to be
associated with creative activity. These include self-discipline, ability to delay gratification, perseverance in the
face of frustration, independence, an absence of conformity in thinking, and lack of dependence on social
approval. Individuals with a performance goal orientation (PGO) may desire to prove their own competence,
and are mainly concerned with how they are judged relative by others. Individuals with a PGO typically avoid
situations where they can fail, and therefore are less likely to take risks in order to learn new things. A study
found that the degree of learning goal orientation (LGO) was positively associated with being judged as more
creative and innovative, whereas PGO was not associated with creativity or innovation.
Also a study found that all of the job characteristics (task autonomy, task identity, task feedback and task
variety) except task significance were related to higher levels of self-rated creative performance.
Finally, researchers have recently examined the relationship between job embeddedness and innovation
among employees at different stages of their careers. Job embeddedness refers to employees experiencing a
high degree of fit between themselves and their jobs, and being tied to their jobs as a result of the connections
between people they work with and the tasks they do, and the sacrifices they have put into their job. A study
found that employees who reported higher job embeddedness also reported engaging in more innovative
behaviour and that this relationship was stronger for employees in the middle and later stages of their career.
Organisational Determinants of Creativity and Innovation
What can organisations do to foster creativity and innovation among employees?
Organisations can provide training in the use of creative problem-solving methods such as
brainstorming.
Through influencing task motivation: one way is to attempt to place employees into jobs that they
genuinely enjoy. Another way is through the identification and removal of external constraints.
A study found four major factors to assess an organisation’s climate for innovation: activating
leadership, continuous questioning, consequential implementation (seeing that the implementation
had real consequences) and professional documentation. The authors found that a climate for
innovation was related to variables such as quality of developed solutions for organisational problems
and product innovations.
Another study argued that five environmental factors in organisations can contribute to creativity in
employees: encouraging creativity, autonomy and freedom, pressures, and obstacles to creativity.
A meta-analysis also looked at predictors of creativity and innovation. Technical innovations pertain to
innovations in products, services, and production process technology. Administrative innovations focus on
organisational structure and administrative processes. The results of the study suggest there are several
organisational-level predictors of innovation.
The strongest predictor, was technical knowledge resources. Organisations are more likely to adopt innovations
when they have employees who possess technical expertise to facilitate and understand the implementation
process.
