Work environments for employee creativity

Psychological Safety and Creativity in Teams: A Mediated Moderation Model of Shared Leadership and Team Diversity

The current study extends the literature on psychological safety and team creativity by exploring the questions of whether, how and when psychological safety influences team creativity positively. Specifically, the current study proposes that psychological safety has a positive impact on team creativity and this impact is mediated by shared leadership. Furthermore, the study introduces team diversity as a potential moderator in the relationships between psychological safety and team creativity through shared leadership. It is found that the direct effect of psychological safety on team creativity is more positive when team members perceive high diversity. Using a sample of 135 members working in teams in R&D departments in the electronics industry, the hypotheses were largely supported. Theoretical contributions, practical implications and future research directions are discussed.

Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication, and Collaboration: Assessment, Certification, and Promotion of 21st Century Skills for the Future of Work and Education

This article addresses educational challenges posed by the future of work, examining “21st century skills”, their conception, assessment, and valorization. It focuses in particular on key soft skill competencies known as the “4Cs”: creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. In a section on each C, we provide an overview of assessment at the level of individual performance, before focusing on the less common assessment of systemic support for the development of the 4Cs that can be measured at the institutional level (i.e., in schools, universities, professional training programs, etc.). We then present the process of official assessment and certification known as “labelization”, suggesting it as a solution both for establishing a publicly trusted assessment of the 4Cs and for promoting their cultural valorization. Next, two variations of the “International Institute for Competency Development’s 21st Century Skills Framework” are presented. The first of these comprehensive systems allows for the assessment and labelization of the extent to which development of the 4Cs is supported by a formal educational program or institution. The second assesses informal educational or training experiences, such as playing a game. We discuss the overlap between the 4Cs and the challenges of teaching and institutionalizing them, both of which may be assisted by adopting a dynamic interactionist model of the 4Cs—playfully entitled “Crea-Critical-Collab-ication”—for pedagogical and policy-promotion purposes. We conclude by briefly discussing opportunities presented by future research and new technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

Transforming Residential Interiors into Workspaces during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Residential interiors (RIs) have been designed by anonymous designers throughout history and have reflected their users’ identity, culture, and habits until modern times, although design and architecture courses rarely involve residential interiors in their curriculums. Therefore, decision-makers (architects, interior architects, designers, and users) took them for granted. However, COVID-19 forced revisiting this approach towards RIs and they faced a gap in the literature helping them to design these interiors, especially workspaces, in order to improve their users’ experience. In connection with previous studies, which explored creativity in workspaces, this study aims to compile colour-related literature work on workspaces in RIs (WRI) which will require further attention from interior architects to reconsider the discipline under new normal conditions. Providing a framework for WRIs in terms of function and activity might lead to the semantics of RIs in future studies. This study’s findings contribute to the interpretation and understanding of new normal workspace interiors after the COVID-19 pandemic so it will be beneficial for decision-makers in addition to researchers who aim to investigate this topic in future studies.

Leader’s Implicit Followership and Employees’ Innovative Behavior: Chain Mediation Effect of Leader–Member Exchange and Psychological Empowerment

In the Chinese society, where power distance is high, leaders’ attitudes and behavior toward employees determine their career development as well as affect the entire team’s performance. Therefore, exploring the kind of employees that leaders expect in China is essential. Based on implicit followership theory perspective, this study considers leaders’ positive implicit followership (LPIF) as the main research variable and examines its influence on employees’ innovative behavior (EIB). Moreover, it explores the multiple mediation effect of the leader–member exchange (LMX) relationship and psychological empowerment (PE) in this influence mechanism. The study sample comprised 389 leaders and their direct employees at 45 large- and medium-sized enterprises in Shandong, Beijing, Hebei, Shanghai, Shanxi, Zhejiang, and other regions of China. We used the leader–employee 1:1 matching questionnaire, and the longitudinal research design was adopted to avoid homology variance, making the study results more realistic and reliable. This study used the SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 26.0 statistical software to verify the hypotheses. Our findings show that LPIF has a significant positive effect on EIB, and LMX and PE have multiple mediation effects on the relationship between LPIF and EIB. When the level of LPIF is high, LMX and PE are also enhanced, which in turn promotes the increase in EIB. This study provides a new perspective for subsequent research on the psychological mechanism of employees and suggests an important method for understanding leadership and following processes in an organization. It plays a guiding role for the management practice of an enterprise, selection of leaders, and training of employees.

Collaboration Between Humans and Robots in Organizations: A Macroergonomic, Emotional, and Spiritual Approach

The new managerial challenges are related to finding solutions for complex problems, inside some more and more complex management systems, in a continuously changing organizational context. Competitivity and progress imply a continuous positive change and the need to accept, respond, and adapt to the organization’s internal and external environments changes. This brief research report aims to point out the organizational ergonomics’ contribution to employees’ wellbeing through a systemic, emotional, and spiritual approach to man’s interaction with technology, systems, and organizational environment. The research methods used were the multidisciplinary bibliographic study and the interview. Three semi-structured interviews were taken to explore today’s challenges and new 4.0 technologies’ impact, especially robots, on the company and on employees’ wellbeing and spiritual fulfillment. The novelty comes from the analysis of new technologies’ impact on the human factor from the spiritual point of view. Our main results have to do with the shaping of a model for human capital’s valorization and with suggesting a list for monitoring human capital valorization in the company. This article’s main conclusion shows that the organizations’ management must be prepared to manage future challenges by improving the employee’s abilities, adaptability to change, and collaboration with robots.

The Influence of Sense of Place on Elementary School Students' Creativity During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Mediating and Buffering Effects of Psychological Resilience

Purpose

To understand the relationship between sense of place and creativity and the mechanisms that affect this relationship, the researchers constructed a mediation model to examine the effect of sense of place on creativity and the mediating role of psychological resilience in elementary school students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

A total of 1,711 students in an elementary school in Beijing, China, were surveyed using Chinese-language versions of the Sense of Place Scale, the Psychological Resilience Scale-Short Version, and the Innovative Behavior Inventory. SPSS (version 23) and PROCESS plug-in (version 3.3) were used for correlation and mediation analyses.

Results

(1) Correlation analysis revealed that sense of place was positively related to psychological resilience (r = 0.445, p < 0.01) and creativity (r = 0.590, p < 0.01). (2) Psychological resilience was also positively correlated with creativity (r = 0.625, p < 0.01). (3) Further, after controlling for gender and grade level, it was found that sense of place directly predicted creativity and that sense of place also indirectly predicted creativity through psychological resilience. The direct effect (0.45) and the mediating effect (0.23) accounted for 65.95 and 34.05% of the total effect, respectively.

Conclusion

The results demonstrate that sense of place is a positive predictor of creativity and can play a facilitating role to some extent. Moreover, psychological resilience is a mediating factor, acting as a buffer between sense of place and creativity. These results contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms influencing creativity.

Transformational Leadership During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Strengthening Employee Engagement Through Internal Communication

This article examines the function of transformational leadership in enhancing employee engagement through internal communication during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure the companies’ sustainability. This article is based on semi-structured interviews with 16 informants (human resources department representatives and employees) from the four industries most impacted by the COVID-19 epidemic: travel, hotel, food and beverage, and retail sectors. The findings reveal that transformational leaders play a critical role in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic by encouraging employees to be innovative and creative, undertaking active actions, and strengthening employee engagement through internal communication. On the other hand, internal communication has changed due to the pandemic, including communication flow, messages, and media. Internal communication has promoted a climate for active communication behaviors encouraging knowledge sharing, collaboration, and creativity-enhancing employee engagement. Through spiritual values, transformational leaders who promote employee engagement amid this crisis ensure the organization's sustainability. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this research suggests that leaders might increase employee engagement by including spiritual values through internal communication.

Happy music and employee creativity in the workplace: Psychological safety as a mediator

The importance of music is a key topic that has been studied in many disciplines. We examined the relationship between employees' perception of happy music and their creative performance, and explored the mediating effect of psychological safety in this link. Data were collected from 315 employees working in three large hotels located in Mainland China. We performed structural equation modeling to test the proposed research model. Results show that employees' perception of happy music was positively related to creative performance, and this relationship was mediated by perceived psychological safety. Therefore, employees produced creative outcomes while perceiving the happiness of music in the workplace, in part because they felt psychologically safe. Our findings offer organizations practical insight into how to promote employee creativity by using music as an effective tool for enhancing the quality of the work environment. Implications for future research are discussed.

A Study on the Relationship Between Learning Motivation and Learning Effectiveness of Personnel Based on Innovation Capability

Under the impact of intense competition in the face of globalization, the enhancement of the quality of human capital has become the primary goal for enterprises reinforcing the competitiveness as well as the power for constant growth and profit creation. It is the well-known norm of enterprises as well as the standard of human resource management; the enhancement of capability is the key activity of enterprises as well as the common task for modern people. Work and learning run parallel in order to cope with the rapid accumulation and change of knowledge; furthermore, in addition to enterprises providing opportunities for education, employees are requested to constantly update their training. Employees in the high-tech industry in Shanxi Province, as the research objects, were distributed 500 copies of one standard questionnaire, where 384 valid copies were retrieved, with a retrieval rate of 77%. The research results illustrate significantly positive effects of (1) learning motivation on innovation capability, (2) innovation capability on learning effectiveness, and (3) learning motivation on learning effectiveness. According to the results, providing the high-tech industry with more effective education curriculum planning and arrangement is expected.

The drivers of employee creativity and organizational innovation: a dynamic capability view

Purpose

This paper aims to examine the drivers of employee creativity and organizational innovation empirically. And to study how employee creativity significantly impacts organizational innovation in a highly competitive market.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is grounded in positivism philosophy. The theoretical model is grounded in the dynamic capability view (DCV) and further developed ten hypotheses and sub-hypotheses. To test our research hypotheses the authors utilized psychometric-based instruments. The authors obtained 575 responses from the automobile industry in India after multiple follow-ups. The data were utilized to check the construct validity and tested the authors’ research hypotheses using the co-variance-based structural equation modeling (SEM) tool (IBM SPSS AMOS 20.0).

Findings

The results support the authors’ research hypotheses. The findings of this study conform to the previous findings of the scholars which is an important aspect of the study. In the past various scholars have made an attempt to reproduce the results in different contexts. In a way, it helps to build confidence in the scientific merit of the results. It may be considered as an incremental contribution to the literature but it helps establish confidence in the theory of creativity and innovation.

Practical implications

The results offer a nuanced understanding to the practitioners and policy makers to understand “what” and “how” to improve employee creativity that plays a significant role in organizational innovation.

Originality/value

This study is an attempt to examine how the theory of creativity and innovation can be embraced by the Indian automobile industry.

Designing creative spaces: an experimental examination of the effect of a nature poster on divergent thinking

This paper reports the results of an independent samples experiment designed to examine the effects of the presence of a large poster depicting a natural woodland scene on individual performance on two Divergent Thinking tasks. In comparison to the no-poster control condition, the presentation of a large poster depicting a nature scene was found to lead to greater levels of creativity as rated by judges who were blind to the experimental design. The effects of the large poster on Divergent Thinking were found to hold when controlling for Openness-to-Experience and Mood. Exploratory analyses of participant ratings of room characteristics indicated that the mechanism underlying the posters' effect related to elevated stimulation. Practitioner summary: This study compared the effects of presenting a large poster depicting a natural woodland scene (experimental condition) versus no poster (control condition) on individual creative thinking. Three judges, who were unaware of the design of the study, did not know the participant responses were from two different conditions and who did not facilitate the experiment rated the responses of the participants who were exposed to the large poster as significantly more creative.

The influence of classroom seating arrangement on children's cognitive processes in primary school: the role of individual variables

To date, despite the great debate regarding the best seating arrangement for learning in classrooms, no empirical studies have examined the direct effects of different seating arrangements on children’s cognitive processes. This is particularly important nowadays that the COVID-19 measures include maintaining distance in the classroom. Aim of this study was experimentally investigating the effect of changing the seating arrangement (clusters vs. single desks), on logical reasoning, creativity and theory of mind, in children attending primary school. Furthermore, some individual characteristics (e.g., gender, loneliness, popularity) were analysed as potential moderators. Results on 77 participants showed that, when children were seated in single desks, their score in logical reasoning was globally higher. Furthermore, when seated in single desks, girls showed a better performance in the theory of mind, and lonelier children performed better in theory of mind and creativity. This on field experimental study suggests the importance of considering both the nature of the task and children’s individual characteristics when deciding on a seating arrangement in the classroom.

Are Open‐Plan Office Designs Still Popular After Coronavirus Pandemic?

Recently the modern focus of management, human resource, and health research were on office design and reducing or minimizing workplace problems and overall cost for office design. Thus, the concepts of open‐plan office design have been defined as providing at least a basic solution to many of these notable and current challenges in current working systems and organizations. In fact, open workspaces are often suggested since they offer more flexibility for dynamic organizational changes and fast technological growth in the modern working style. Today because of the spread of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) there is a need to focus even on new open‐plan office designs to prevent and minimize health risks. The fact is the world needs to be ready for new viruses and or perhaps to unknown diseases in the future. The role of the workplace and the physical environment that affects employees’ perceptions about the work environment has always been challenging. In fact, managers and space designers need to pay careful attention to designing the work environment with a supportive workspace is a beneficial activity to promote individuals’ perceptions about the work environment, satisfaction, and outcome. In this condition, employees feel valued by the organization and management. Consequently, the role of environmental features in affecting employees’ perceptions about the workplace, environmental satisfaction, and overall outcome is remarkable and must be understood by managers and space designers.

El clima laboral en la biblioteca universitaria: el caso de seis bibliotecas universitarias en Colombia

La investigación se centra en el clima laboral en bibliotecas universitarias de la ciudad de Bogotá, para lo cual se definieron cinco categorías: relaciones laborales, innovación y cambio, recursos y condiciones de trabajo, compensación y remuneración, y orientación e identidad. La metodología que se empleó fue cuantitativa, consistió en la aplicación de un instrumento a 120 empleados pertenecientes a seis bibliotecas. Los resultados evidenciaron un clima laboral estable, siendo la categoría identidad –apropiación de los valores institucionales y la satisfacción del lugar ocupado en la organización– la que obtuvo la mejor percepción; por su parte, las carencias más significativas frente al ambiente laboral en las bibliotecas están centradas principalmente en temas de innovación y cambio, así como en las relaciones laborales.

Understanding the psychological and social influences on office workers taking breaks; a thematic analysis

Objective: There is a growing trend whereby office workers refrain from taking breaks at work. Previous research has not explored how employees understand the enablers and barriers to taking breaks. This study explored how office-based workers describe their behaviour in relation to, and perceive the notion of, taking breaks.Design: Five focus groups were held with 27 employees of differing levels of seniority at a local authority in the UK. Inductive thematic analysis was employed with the researchers maintaining a deliberate stance of curiosity towards the data, allowing for reflexivity and awareness of preconceptions towards the research.Results: The analysis identified 5 key themes: the non-binary nature of taking breaks at work, the influence of social and work relationships, the superordination of work over breaks and health, contradictory feelings of guilt and anxiety and being 'fair game' for work related matters if you remain at your desk at break times.Conclusion: This paper suggests that the complex relationships that people have with taking breaks, with others and with their physical environment should be taken into account when trying to understand break-taking behaviour. Based on these findings, suggestions for further research and potential health-related policy and organisational changes are made.

A Biological Adaptability Approach to Innovation for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs): Strategic Insights from and for Health-Promoting Agri-Food Innovation

Adaptability has emerged in management/entrepreneurship literature as a business strategy to innovate, perform, and respond in a flexible manner to ever-changing contexts. Contemporary culture blurs boundaries between physical, biological, and digital domains, accelerating what entrepreneurship in sectors such as agri-food contributes to societal-scale solutions to problems at the convergence of social and commercial activities. In this study, we build upon the adaptability of biological systems to propose an approach to innovation, anchored in a tight, dynamic alignment between the strategic DNA of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the contexts in which they evolve. Our model employs interviews and supporting archival research on the health-promoting innovation practices of 37 SMEs in the agri-food sector. A two-year, single firm analysis illustrates its relevance and operational feasibility. Evidence suggests that the strategic DNA of SMEs, seen through the entrepreneurs’ identity, informs behavior at various stages of the innovation process and the enterprise’s evolution. Shifting identity prioritization is a reality, and interaction between entrepreneurial organizations and the environment is best understood as an interaction between the DNA of the entrepreneur/enterprise and the environment. This is valuable and will help agri-food and other SMEs to improve their ability to make the internal and external strategic adjustments required in a rapidly changing landscapes to create viable health-promoting food products.

Service creativity reinforcement and firm performance

Purpose

Many service firms have adopted creativity reinforcement mechanisms to manage employee-based service creativity so as to pursue their performance growth. However, its impact on firm performance has rarely been investigated in the extant research. The purpose of this paper is to satisfy this knowledge gap through an examination of how service creativity reinforcement (SCR) affects a firm’s performance.

Design/methodology/approach

Two samples were used to test the hypotheses. The first sample included a total of 4,381 service firms and was analyzed by using a traditional moderated regression method in relation to sales growth as the outcome variable. Due to a number of missing values, the second sample was reduced to 1,481 service firms. This sample was analyzed by using a moderated fractional regression method and the outcome variable was innovation performance. Furthermore, a multi-valued treatment approach with the augmented inverse-propensity weighted estimator was adopted to assess the performance effect that was associated with each of the SCR mechanisms.

Findings

Statistical analyses suggested that SCR positively affected both the firm’s performance and its innovation performance. Specifically, the stronger performance effects of SCR were associated with firms that had high innovation intensity, were small service firms and were part of the knowledge-intensive business service (KIBS) sector. The results also found that brainstorming sessions, a multi-disciplinary team approach, task rotation and non-financial incentives had greater performance effects than other mechanisms, especially for firms in the KIBS sector that had high innovation intensity. In addition, the results indicated that team-level mechanisms were more effective in developing highly innovative services than were individual-level mechanisms.

Originality/value

This study has contributed to the service literature by developing a contingency framework for SCR. This study has also advanced service research through the presentation of contextual effects associated with each mechanism of SCR.

Location choices of face-to-face interactions in academic buildings: an experience sampling approach

Although it is recognised that face-to-face interactions are important for sharing interests and (new) knowledge, it remains unknown how and where students and university employees interact in academic buildings. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyse the location choice for face-to-face interactions in an academic building, including several personal- and interaction characteristics. An Experience Sampling Method (ESM) was used to collect data on 643 face-to-face interactions during two weeks in the Flux building at Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. In general, students more often interacted in meeting rooms than teaching staff, and support staff interacted less in eat/drink areas and the hallways than other users. Unexpectedly, some of the lectures took place outside of traditional project-/lecture space. Real estate managers of university campuses could use these results to create better interactive work environments that stimulate face-to-face interactions among employees and students of different departments. Practitioner Summary: Based on longitudinal data of ftf interactions among students and employees in an academic building, results showed that ftf interaction characteristics, compared to personal characteristics, are most important for explaining the location choice of interactions. These insights could help to design academic work environments that optimise the support of interactions. Abbreviation: ABO: activity-based office; ANOVA: analyses of variance; ESM: experience sampling method; FTF: face-to-face; HR: human resources; MMNL: mixed multinomial logit model; NewWoW: new ways of working.

The influence of cultural dimensions when implementing fun in the workplace approach as a driver of creativity

Creativity is essential for success in business, especially in the contemporary world where innovations are a cornerstone of competitive advantage. A large body of literature has examined many factors which influence creative abilities with the work environment being the factor of increasing importance. Creativity has been associated with the work environment through a number of theoretical frameworks and empirical studies. However, the relationship between the work environment and creativity in different cultures has not been explored sufficiently. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by linking the concept of a creativity-supporting work environment and culture. To that end, elements of the work environment (physical, socio-organisational, and fun in the workplace) and creative personality have been analysed on multinational samples. The results clearly point that the relationship exists between dimensions of the national culture (individualism, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, and power distance) and specific elements of a creativity-supporting work environment. Practitioner summary: Companies experience high pressure for generating creative ideas. As a result, stimulating employees' creativity has become a key strategic aim. This study, through cross-cultural primary research, provides clear managerial implications and practical advice for successful implementation and quality adoption of the creativity-supporting work environment worldwide. Abbreviations: A-FOs: activity-based flexible offices; AVG: average; CDQS: creativity development quick scan; CP: creative personality; CPS: creative personality scale; FWP: fun in the workplace; HF/E: human factors and ergonomics; IDV: individualism; MAS: masculinity; MBA: Master of Business Administration; PDI: power distance; PWE: physical work environment; SWE: socio-organisational work environment; UAI: uncertainty avoidance; USA: United States of America; WE: work environment.

Relationship of transformational leadership with employee creativity and organizational innovation

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how creative self-efficacy and physical work environment mediate and moderate the relationship of transformational leadership with employee creativity and organizational innovation.

Design/methodology/approach

The data were collected from 254 managers working in two major automotive manufacturing units in India. The survey response rate was 81.9 percent. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Findings

The study findings suggest that transformational leadership augments employee creativity. The authors show that employee creative self-efficacy acts as a mediator and physical work environment as a moderator in the relationship between transformational leadership and employee creativity.

Originality/value

The study contributes by examining mediating and moderating influences in the relationship between transformational leadership and employee creativity. The data were collected from an important industry in a large, emerging economy that has received much less research attention relative to its size and significance.

Honing of employee creativity in Indian automobile industry

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of organizational climate, physical work environment and organizational encouragement on enhancing employee creativity in the Indian automobile industry.

Design/methodology/approach

The study used descriptive research design. Through a stratified random sampling method, the authors collected 250 valid responses which were considered suitable to carry out the study. Structural equation modeling was used to validate the hypothesized research model, whereas confirmatory factor analysis was incorporated into the study to check the reliability and robustness of the constructs.

Findings

The results of the study indicated that creative instinct within the employees working in the automobile units becomes more profound when an organization provides a climate and physical work environment which is conducive to stimulate the creative thought process of the employees by encouraging its employees for exchanging ideas among themselves, which motivates them to think out of the box and subsequently foster their creative ability.

Practical implications

This study incorporates measures that are essential in enhancing the creative ability of the employees working in the Indian automobile industry which can be tactically nurtured by these factors.

Originality/value

The findings add to the existing literature by developing visions and enumerating how organizational climate, physical work environment and organizational encouragement enhances creativity within individuals in Indian automobile units.

Facilitation of creative performance by using blue and red accent lighting in work and learning areas

Research has shown that colours influence motivation and cognitive performance. In achievement contexts, red evokes avoidance motivation that hinders creativity, while blue elicits an approach motivation that facilitates creativity. However, due to their position and mode of presentation, colours may convey a different message. Red accent lighting creates a cosy, friendly room atmosphere that may, even in an achievement context, elicit an approach rather than an avoidance motivation. Results (N = 146) showed that both blue and red accent light increased strategic approach motivation compared to white accent light. Moreover, through the heightened approach motivation, colourful accent light indirectly improved creative performance. Implications for future research on colour and practical implications for colour usage are discussed. Practitioner Summary: Designing work environments for creativity is a new topic in ergonomics research and practice. The present study demonstrates indirect effects of coloured accent light on creativity providing interesting possibilities for the design of workplaces for knowledge workers, classrooms and all other rooms in which people work on new ideas.

The spatial context of organizations: A critique of ‘creative workspaces’

This paper examines office design as a spatial context of organizations. Organizations increasingly invest in designing workspaces to support employee creativity, foster company innovation and communicate a positive company image. This paper takes a critical view of this ‘hype’ by describing and analysing images of the headquarters of allegedly ‘creative workspaces’ published on the internet across a broad range of industries and corporations. Our analysis shows how their design follows standardized or stereotypical approaches to nurturing creativity: playfully or artistically designed open spaces, environments reminiscent of home, sports and play, nature, past/future technologies, or culturally aligned symbols. We discern underlying connections between office spaces and creativity, suggesting that creativity flourishes in happy, relaxed and playful communities within close-knit teams. We then identify three contradictions in relation to the existing literature on creativity and workspaces: individually versus collectively produced creativity; professionally designed workspaces versus workspaces created through participation; and planned versus emerging creativity.

Creative workspaces – a fad or making real impact?

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the current trend of designing workspaces to foster creativity. The paper brings forth themes that seem to be connected with the so-called ‘creative workspaces’. The paper discusses how the findings relate to recent theory and research. Finally, the paper develops propositions to further elaborate the issue.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper adopts an inductive and social constructionist approach. In all, 40 internet pictures of workspaces claimed to be creative among a broad range of industries and companies which were analyzed through an aesthetic lens and compared to what theory and research about organizational creativity and space inform us.

Findings

The designs of ‘creative workspaces’ follow a rather standardized and deterministic assumption of what kind of spaces are considered to produce creativity: open offices, happy, playful communities of close-knit teams and spatial arrangements that resemble home, symbols and memories, sports, technology and nature. This view of creativity and workspaces remains a management fad unless a more balanced approach to the issue is assumed.

Research limitations/implications

The sample is not to be representative and the findings generalizable as such, but to bring forth the phenomenon. This exploratory and inductive approach calls for a systematic study to prove the propositions in a more controlled research setting and with a bigger sample.

Practical implications

The paper makes a few suggestions of what companies should pay attention to when building workspaces to improve organizational creativity – and to overcome the fad.

Social implications

The proposed end-user perspective may ultimately save costs, if people can voice their needs on the space arrangements from the beginning and throughout the building process, not only after the spaces are fully complete, as is typically the case.

Originality/value

The paper provides a critical view on the trend of building work spaces to purposefully enhance organizational creativity. It brings forth themes that are connected to creativity and workspace designs and suggests that more nuances are involved in the issue.

The moderating role of non-controlling supervision and organizational learning culture on employee creativity

Purpose

By adopting a multilevel approach, this paper aims to examine the relationships among employee creativity and creative personality, domain expertise (i.e. individual-level factors), non-controlling supervision style and organizational learning culture (i.e. team-level factors). It also investigates the cross-level interactions between individual differences and organizational context influencing employee creativity.

Design/methodology/approach

Hierarchical linear modeling was performed to test the hypotheses using multisource data with 416 employees and their supervisors in 86 research and development teams.

Findings

This paper found that domain expertise and non-controlling supervision style are positively associated with employee creativity. Also, a positive moderating role of non-controlling supervision style was found in explaining the relationship between domain expertise and employee creativity. However, no significant relationship was found between creative personality and employee creativity, and there was no moderating effect of organizational learning culture. The paper discusses the theoretical implications of these findings and provides practical suggestions based on the findings.

Originality/value

This paper has begun to address the significant gap in the extant employee creativity literature and has departed from the common research practice of investigating creativity at a single level. It has expanded understanding of the antecedents of creativity with empirical evidence, as it revealed domain expertise and non-controlling supervision as influential factors. Further, domain expertise has generally positive effects on creative performance, whether non-controlling leadership is high or low. Additionally, this study brings an interesting insight in interpreting the contribution of organizational learning culture as measured by the Dimensions of Learning Organization Questionnaire to creativity and also affirms the importance of autonomy that increases intrinsic motivation and creativity. Another theoretical contribution of this study can be found from an intriguing contradiction in the literature that understands the role of expertise in creative performance. Moreover, the finding on non-controlling supervision supports the effectiveness of a freedom approach.

Regresso às Origens: A Importância do Indivíduo na Criatividade nas Organizações

Resumo O objetivo deste texto é realçar o papel do indivíduo na criatividade nas organizações. Esse papel tem sido estranhamente remetido para um plano secundário, à medida que as modernas visões da criatividade a definem, sobretudo, com relação ao contexto em que ocorre. De fato, na perspectiva atual, a criatividade não pode ser entendida sem se considerarem os contextos funcional, relacional e organizacional nos quais está inserido o trabalhador. Tais são as considerações da maior parte dos autores que escreve sobre o tópico, como sejam Amabile (1996), Csikszentmihalyi (1996), ou, mais recentemente, Glăveanu (2010a, 2010b). Essa corrente dominante, com origem no interacionismo psico-social, tem ainda influenciado o desenvolvimento teórico de outros conceitos em psicologia, sociologia, e, na sequência, nas ciências sociais e humanas, e na gestão. Essa supremacia no que concerne a criatividade, tem conduzido os autores a olvidar o papel do indivíduo no processo e no resultado criativos, chegando a retirar-lhe a responsabilidade e o protagonismo pela geração e produção de ideias. Desse modo, no presente texto, recuperam-se os argumentos em favor da centralidade da pessoa na criatividade, defendendo-se que esta tem uma existência isolada de influências externas, e que, como tal, devem relembrar-se as bases individuais da criatividade.

Front and backstage in the workplace

Purpose

The ability of employees to handle work-related demands, structure their own work and manage workflow is highly important in today’s complex organisations. This paper aims to explore the impact of the office environment on employees’ ability to control interaction, structure their own work processes and handle work-related demands. The focus is on the influence of the physical premises, especially on how work within private, privileged and public work zones may affect perceptions of, and possibilities to control, customer interactions and other work-related demands.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is based on a qualitative case study of a Norwegian finance corporation. The core method was semi-structured interviews, carried out with 29 employees and managers. The triangulated research design included observations, field notes, user logs and document analyses.

Findings

The findings indicate that, in a customer-centred work process, separate zones for customer-related work and for internal work provide employees with increased scope to handle work demands and perceive control in their work. Zoning helped structure the workflow and provided employees with new resources in customer interaction and other work tasks.

Originality/value

Broadening the focus on environmental control and work-related demands from individual coping to social interaction may provide more insight into factors influencing work processes and employee well-being in emerging workplace concepts.

Creative Practices Embodied, Embedded, and Enacted in Architectural Settings: Toward an Ecological Model of Creativity

Memoires by eminently creative people often describe architectural spaces and qualities they believe instrumental for their creativity. However, places designed to encourage creativity have had mixed results, with some found to decrease creative productivity for users. This may be due, in part, to lack of suitable empirical theory or model to guide design strategies. Relationships between creative cognition and features of the physical environment remain largely uninvestigated in the scientific literature, despite general agreement among researchers that human cognition is physically and socially situated. This paper investigates what role architectural settings may play in creative processes by examining documented first person and biographical accounts of creativity with respect to three central theories of situated cognition. First, the embodied thesis argues that cognition encompasses both the mind and the body. Second, the embedded thesis maintains that people exploit features of the physical and social environment to increase their cognitive capabilities. Third, the enaction thesis describes cognition as dependent upon a person's interactions with the world. Common themes inform three propositions, illustrated in a new theoretical framework describing relationships between people and their architectural settings with respect to different cognitive processes of creativity. The framework is intended as a starting point toward an ecological model of creativity, which may be used to guide future creative process research and architectural design strategies to support user creative productivity.

Virtual Reality and the Enhancement of Creativity and Innovation: Under Recognized Potential Among Converging Technologies?

This article highlights virtual reality (VR) as perhaps the safest, most fully developed of the emerging technologies of cognitive enhancement and as an underused tool for the enhancement of creativity in particular. We argue that researchers, educators, trainers, designers, managers, and others concerned with innovation should be more informed about virtual reality technologies (VRTs) both because of their widespread and growing accessibility and because of the significant, synergistic contributions they can make to human performance and understanding. We present a brief consultative survey exploring the potential use of virtual worlds (VWs) such as Second Life among a group of professionals (N= 20) working in the area of creativity and innovation training. In addition to providing some useful perspectives and creativity strategies for implementation, results suggest that the possibilities represented by VRTs may not be fully appreciated by those who could make the most use of them. We argue that VRTs offer a cost-effective means of implementing and optimizing nearlyallconventional individual and collaborative creativity enhancement techniques while also offering potent new possibilities and combinations not available by other means. Thus, we outline five ways VR can be used to enhance creativity and problem solving: (a) by changing aspects of the self and self-perception; (b) by optimizing interactions and collaboration with others; (c) by optimizing environmental conditions and influences; (d) by facilitating guidance orgamificationof the problem-solving process; and (e) by offering an arena for the integration of other technologies of creativity enhancement such as pharmacological enhancement, brain stimulation, and neurofeedback. The article ends with a discussion of this technological convergence within the growing sciences of innovation and cognitive enhancement.

Get Up, Stand Up

Non-sedentary work configurations, which encourage standing rather than sitting in the course of work, are becoming increasingly prevalent in organizations. In this article, we build and test theory about how non-sedentary arrangements influence interpersonal processes in groups performing knowledge work—tasks that require groups to combine information to develop creative ideas and solve problems. We propose that a non-sedentary workspace increases group arousal, while at the same time decreasing group idea territoriality, both of which result in better information elaboration and, indirectly, better group performance. The results of an experimental study of 54 groups engaged in a creative task provide support for this dual pathway model and underscore the important role of the physical space in which a group works as a contextual input to group processes and outcomes.

The perceived importance and the presence of creative potential in the health professional's work environment

The value of creative employees to an organisation's growth and innovative development, productivity, quality and sustainability is well established. This study examined the perceived relationship between creativity and work environment factors of 361 practicing health professionals, and whether these factors were present (realised) in their work environment. Job design (challenges, team work, task rotation, autonomy) and leadership (coaching supervisor, time for thinking, creative goals, recognition and incentives for creative ideas and results) were perceived as the most important factors for stimulating creativity. There was room for improvement of these in the work environment. Many aspects of the physical work environment were less important. Public health sector employers and organisations should adopt sustainable strategies which target the important work environment factors to support employee creativity and so enhance service quality, productivity, performance and growth. Implications of the results for ergonomists and workplace managers are discussed with a participatory ergonomics approach recommended.

PRACTITIONER SUMMARY

Creative employees are important to an organisation's innovation, productivity and sustainability. The survey identified health professionals perceive a need to improve job design and leadership factors at work to enhance and support employee creativity. There are implications for organisations and ergonomists to investigate the creative potential of work environments.

Innovation characteristics and intention to adopt sustainable facilities management practices

Sustainable facilities management (SFM) is important because typical buildings consume more resources and energy than necessary, negatively impact the environment and generate lots of waste (US Department of Energy, 2003, Green Buildings). This study examined innovation characteristics that relate to facility managers' intention to adopt SFM practices. Based on the diffusion of innovations theory (Rogers 1962, 1995, Diffusion of Innovations. 4th ed. New York: The Free Press), an SFM innovation and adoption model was proposed. A survey was conducted with a convenience sample of 240 public facilities managers in 25 facilities management divisions in Seoul, Korea, and its metropolitan areas. Structural equation modelling was employed to analyse the data. The results showed that economic advantage and human comfort aspects are predictors for the intention of SFM adoption. Observability is positively relevant to the intention of SFM adoption. Complexity, however, is not a significant predictor for the intention of SFM adoption. Practical implications for sustainable products and systems and the built environment are suggested.

PRACTITIONER SUMMARY

To incorporate an innovation like sustainable practices, it is required to meet the needs of potential adopters. Innovation characteristics that influence facility managers' intention to adopt sustainable facilities management were examined. A survey was conducted. Economic advantage, human comfort and observability are predictors for the intention of adoption of sustainable practice.

Green ergonomics: definition and scope

This paper demonstrates that the goals of ergonomics (i.e. effectiveness, efficiency, health, safety and usability) are closely aligned with the goals of design for environmental sustainability. In this paper, the term 'green ergonomics' is conceptualised to specifically describe ergonomics interventions with a pro-nature emphasis. Green ergonomics is focused on the bi-directional connections between human systems and nature. This involves looking at (1) how ergonomics design and evaluation might be used to conserve, preserve, and restore nature and (2) how ecosystem services might be harnessed to facilitate the improved wellbeing and effectiveness of human systems. The paper proposes the scope of green ergonomics based on these bi-directional relationships in the areas of the design of low resource systems and products, the design of green jobs, and the design for behaviour change. Suggestions for further work in the green ergonomics domain are also made.

PRACTITIONER SUMMARY

Given the enormous environmental challenges facing modern industrial society, this paper encourages ergonomics science to embrace a pro-nature understanding of work design and research. This paper sets out the role for green ergonomics based on an appreciation of the human-nature connections that have been integrated with our understanding of ergonomics science and practice.

NEW BUSINESS MODELS THROUGH COLLABORATIVE IDEA GENERATION

Generating novel and sustainable business model ideas is a crucial yet challenging innovation task. A growing body of literature shows that artefacts, such as visual templates, objects and sketches, can enhance team collaboration and creativity in innovation activities. Drawing on literature from diverse fields we propose a model that aims to explain how artefacts can affect the team processes in developing new business model ideas, positing that they have an impact on creativity and collaboration. We report the results of an illustrative experimental study comparing the team processes of managers working on a business model innovation task. Teams were supported by different types of artefacts (a business model template; physical objects with sketching; or PowerPoint). The results indicate that using the template significantly increases perceived collaboration and decreases perceived creativity, hence showing that artefacts can have the power to shape team work for innovation tasks.

A strategy for human factors/ergonomics: developing the discipline and profession

Human factors/ergonomics (HFE) has great potential to contribute to the design of all kinds of systems with people (work systems, product/service systems), but faces challenges in the readiness of its market and in the supply of high-quality applications. HFE has a unique combination of three fundamental characteristics: (1) it takes a systems approach (2) it is design driven and (3) it focuses on two closely related outcomes: performance and well-being. In order to contribute to future system design, HFE must demonstrate its value more successfully to the main stakeholders of system design. HFE already has a strong value proposition (mainly well-being) and interactivity with the stakeholder group of 'system actors' (employees and product/service users). However, the value proposition (mainly performance) and relationships with the stakeholder groups of 'system experts' (experts fromtechnical and social sciences involved in system design), and 'system decision makers' (managers and other decision makers involved in system design, purchase, implementation and use), who have a strong power to influence system design, need to be developed. Therefore, the first main strategic direction is to strengthen the demand for high-quality HFE by increasing awareness among powerful stakeholders of the value of high-quality HFE by communicating with stakeholders, by building partnerships and by educating stakeholders. The second main strategic direction is to strengthen the application of high-quality HFE by promoting the education of HFE specialists, by ensuring high-quality standards of HFE applications and HFE specialists, and by promoting HFE research excellence at universities and other organisations. This strategy requires cooperation between the HFE community at large, consisting of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA), local (national and regional) HFE societies, and HFE specialists. We propose a joint world-wide HFE development plan, in which the IEA takes a leadership role.

PRACTITIONER SUMMARY

Human factors/ergonomics (HFE) has much to offer by addressing major business and societal challenges regarding work and product/service systems. HFE potential, however, is underexploited. This paper presents a strategy for the HFE community to strengthen demand and application of high-quality HFE, emphasising its key elements: systems approach, design driven, and performance and well-being goals.