Creativity in Organisations

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Creativity in Organisations

• Professor Fiona Patterson
• and
• Rebecca Port
• Psychology Department, City University.

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Plan

• Introduce the Organisational Psychology Group at
  City University
• Define creativity in organisations
• Three central research themes
• 1) Employee traits and behaviours predict
  employ creativity
• 2) Contextual factors which influence creative
  behaviour
• 3) New technology and creativity
• Explore future research directions

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Organisational Psychology Group

• City University, Psychology Department
• Main research themes are employee assessment,
  selection and development
• Creativity at the individual level and how to
  enhance it
• The impact of technology on creativity
• Clients include NHS Executive, DoH, Coors
  Brewers, Nestle, Mars, the DTI

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Definition of creativity at work

• The generation and the IMPLEMENTATION of ideas
• Aims to benefit the organisation
• Complex reiterative process
• West and Farr (1990)
• .the intentional introduction and application
  within a role, group or organisation of ideas,
  processes, products or procedures, new to the
  relevant unit of adoption, designed to
  specifically benefit the individual, the group,
  the organisation or wider society.

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Employee creativity

• Patterson (1999)
• Item generation using a multi-method approach
• 102 behavioural descriptions associated with
  creativity
• Item analyses psychometric development produced
  a four factor model (N3000)
• Four factor model
• Challenging behaviour ()
• Motivation to change ()
• Adaptation (-)
• Consistency of work styles (-)
• Innovation Potential Indicator (IPI) published by
  Oxford Psychological Press

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The four factor model
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Trevor Baylis - Inventor
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Charles Handy - Guru
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(No Transcript)
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Enhancing creativity Managerial influences

• Range of studies using multi-method approach
  (Port 20012003)
• Identified and developed a psychometric model of
  managerial behaviours which enhance creativity
• Four factor model
• Innovation orientation
• Ideas guidance
• Social support
• Empowerment

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Enhancing creativity
Empowerment Giving autonomy Trusting and
delegating
Task Actions

• Ideas guidance
• Giving resource support for creativity
• Giving advisory feedback
• Giving rewards and recognition for creativity
• Giving supportive encouragement to be creative
• Not criticising ideas
• Having integrity with others ideas
• Social support
• Being approachable
• Being fun to work with
• Being accessible to employees

Exchange Behaviours
Creative Orientation Being Creative Willingness
to Change Openness to ideas and optimism
Person Characteristics
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Organisational influences on employee creativity

• Range of factors identified in research
  literature
• Three themes (Patterson, Port, Hobley, 2003)
• Culture and climate
• Structure and work processes
• External factors

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Technology and innovation

• The dtis vision for futurefocus_at_dti is to enable
  participants to shape the future, to bring about
  positive ongoing change in their working
  environment by enhancing innovation at work.
• in practice, the technology is used to enhance
  futures thinking, get away from the day-to-day,
  focus on what could be rather than what is
• users to date have included various government
  depts private sector industrial partners
• facility comprises 3 main chambers, which have a
  dedicated (but not exclusive) function

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Futurefocus facility

• 1 a virtual reality immersive theatre users work
  with a facilitator to view explore immersive
  interactive scenarios (based on real government
  data, the forces driving change in the world)
• 2 a creativity lab e-based knowledge capture
  software, users explore the implications of
  change generate new ideas
• 3 an interactive gallery users view concept/
  prototype technology process is guided by trained
  facilitators, who aid the generation capture of
  new ideas, channel these into workable outputs
  facilitators work with users both before after

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The Theatre
The Lab
Interactive Society
The facility
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Future research directions

• Path models
• Greater understanding of the links between key
  predictors of creative behaviour
• Future developments in the application and
  evaluation of technology and creative behaviour