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Developing Creativity in the Workplace
In today’s fast changing world, where the only constant is change, companies need to
constantly innovate in order to remain competitive in the marketplace. As such, being one of the
drivers of innovation, it no wonder why creativity is one of the most valued assets in today’s
workforce. Therefore, this project serves to research further into the topic of creativity, seeking
to draw in depth solutions for the development of creativity, especially in the workplace.
Readers may wonder why we bother to research on a much studied topic. This is because
although there has been a burgeoning stream of studies on creativity, the results are not
systematically linked. What we are actually interested in is whether there exists a governing
concept that correlates to the present antecedents of creativity, because if a governing concept
Development of Hypothesis
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs states that when a level of needs is satisfied, a person will
then move on to satisfy a higher level of unfulfilled needs. Relying on this principle, we
conducted an initial research to determine if creativity was in fact developed by fulfilling the
esteem needs of the workforce. Amabile, Conti, Lazenby & Herron, (1996) stated that
encouragement, freedom and challenging task were antecedents of creativity and these
antecedents bore uncanny similarities to the factors that correlate to organization based self-
esteem which Pierce, Gardner, Cummings & Dunham (1989) stated in their research that
managerial respect, mechanistic organization and job complexity were factors that correlate to
Hence, from our initial research above, we saw that the creativity could be in fact a causal
relation between fulfilling the esteem needs of the workforce (OBSE) and creativity. Therefore,
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it leads to the development of our hypothesis: A higher level of OBSE results in higher level of
creativity.
Our Methodology
Our methodology will test the hypothesis that a high level of OBSE will result in a high
level of creativity. A 10-instrument item will be used to test OBSE. (Pierce, Gardner, Cummings
& Dunham (1989)) These items will reflect what we expect employees to consider in evaluating
the extent to which they believe that they are valuable, worthwhile and effectual members in
their organizations. Then a simple 5-point scale (Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby & Herron
(1996)) will be used to rate creativity for team projects. For both variables, surveys will be
Expected Results
We expect a positive correlation between OBSE and creativity, i.e. the higher the level of
OBSE, the higher the level of creativity present in an organization. Leveraging on the expected
results, we conclude that by fulfilling the esteem needs of the workforce (OBSE), the workforce
will then focus on becoming more creative. And as mentioned earlier, we proposed that there
could be a concept that governs the antecedents of creativity which from our expected results, we
can hence conclude that the antecedents of creativity (that past research have found) are in fact
Implications
There are two important implications. Firstly, instead of focusing on the limited and
exhaustive list of antecedents of creativity, organizations now have more ways to develop
creativity, i.e. attempting to fulfill the esteem needs of the workforce. Secondly, research wise,
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more studies could be done to find more factors under the esteem level of needs that may have
Limitations
Some limitations of the study are that creativity characteristics that are present in
individuals are not taken into consideration. However, this is reasonable as we are only interested
in carrying the work environment factors that affect OBSE. Another limitation is that any
working adult can participate in this research study. Finally, we only assume that the antecedents
of OBSE are the cause of creativity. Up to now, research studies have not been able to prove the
above statement. It may well be the case that at least some of the antecedents studied here are
consequences of the level of project creativity. (Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby & Herron
(1996))
Conclusion
seek the answers to developing creativity at the workplace. By proving that the antecedents of
creativity (that past research studies have found) are in fact factors that fulfill the esteem needs of
the workforce, organizations are now not limited by the exhaustive list of ways to develop
creativity.
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References
• Pierce, J. L., Gardner, D. G., Cummings, L. L., & Dunham, R. B. (1989). Organization-based
• Amabile, T.M., Conti, R., Coon, H., Lazenby, J. & Herron, M. (1996). Assessing the work
• Pierce, J. L., Gardner, D. G., (2004). Self-esteem within the work and organizational context:
30(5), 591-622
Loving What You Do." California Management Review 40, no. 1 (fall 1997): 39-58.