Using a multi-year qualitative study, I explain how employees at a fast-growing retail organization used creative resourcing—that is, the manipulation and recombination of objects in novel and useful ways to solve problems. I induce two core organizational processes (autonomous resourcing and directed resourcing) that explain how organizations foster ongoing creative activities in response to different …
Tag Archives: creativity
Mainemelis, C., & Ronson, S. (2006). Ideas are born in fields of play: Towards a theory of play and creativity in organizational settings. Research in Organizational Behavior, 27, 81-131.
Play is manifested in organizational behavior as a form of engagement with work tasks and as a form of diversion from them. In this paper we examine both manifestations of play as sources of creativity. We argue that when play is a form of engagement with an individual’s organizational tasks it facilitates the cognitive, affective, …
Byron, K., Khazanchi, S., &Nazarian, D. (2010). The relationship between stressors and creativity: A meta-analysis examining competing theoretical models. Journal of Applied Psychology, 95(1), 201.
Competing theoretical models and equivocal evidence leave unanswered questions regarding stressors’ effect on creativity. The present meta-analysis of 76 experimental studies (including 82 independent samples) aims to clarify this association and identify factors that may explain differences between studies. Our results suggest that the effect of stressors on creative performance depends on how stress-inducing the …
Elsbach, K. D., &Hargadon, A. B. (2006). Enhancing creativity through “mindless” work: A framework of workday design. Organization Science, 17(4), 470-483.
We propose that organizations use a new framework of workday design to enhance the creativity of today’s chronically overworked professionals. Although insights from creativity research have been integrated into models of work design to increase the stimulants of creativity (e.g., intrinsic motivation), this has not led to work design models that have effectively reduced the …
Wieth, M. B., &Zacks, R. T. (2011). Time of day effects on problem solving: When the non-optimal is optimal. Thinking &Reasoning, 17(4), 387-401.
In a study examining the effects of time of day on problem solving, participants solved insight and analytic problems at their optimal or non-optimal time of day. Given the presumed differences in the cognitive processes involved in solving these two types of problems, it was expected that the reduced inhibitory control associated with non-optimal times …
Kim, K. H. (2011). The creativity crisis: The decrease in creative thinking scores on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. Creativity Research Journal, 23(4), 285-295.
The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) was developed in 1966 and renormed five times: in 1974, 1984, 1990, 1998, and 2008. The total sample for all six normative samples included 272,599 kindergarten through 12th grade students and adults. Analysis of the normative data showed that creative thinking scores remained static or decreased, starting at …
Baird, B., Smallwood, J., Mrazek, M. D., Kam, J. W., Franklin, M. S., &Schooler, J. W. (2012). Inspired by distraction: mind wandering facilitates creative incubation
Although anecdotes that creative thoughts often arise when one is engaged in an unrelated train of thought date back thousands of years, empirical research has not yet investigated this potentially critical source of inspiration. We used an incubation paradigm to assess whether performance on validated creativity problems (the Unusual Uses Task, or UUT) can be …