Constraints that Help or Hinder Creative Performance: A Motivational Approach

Establishing the importance of co-creation and self-efficacy in creative collaboration with artificial intelligence

The emergence of generative AI technologies has led to an increasing number of people collaborating with AI to produce creative works. Across two experimental studies, in which we carefully designed and programmed state-of-the-art human-AI interfaces, we examine how the design of generative AI systems influences human creativity (poetry writing). First, we find that people were most creative when writing a poem on their own, compared to first receiving a poem generated by an AI system and using sophisticated tools to edit it (Study 1). Following this, we demonstrate that this creativity deficit dissipates when people co-create with-not edit-AI and establish creative self-efficacy as an important mechanism in this process (Study 2). Thus, our findings indicate that people must occupy the role of a co-creator, not an editor, to reap the benefits of generative AI in the production of creative works.

Assembly-style making: How structured making serves as an on-ramp to creativity and engineering design

Makerspaces, workspaces where families can explore materials and tools collaboratively, can provide an opportunity for creative expression and early engineering learning in community spaces. The present study examined a cardboard-focused museum makerspace that included an assembly-style activity. Assembly-style making uses instructions to support makers. Such activities have been critiqued as limiting creativity and engineering thinking. However, makers who are less comfortable in makerspaces may benefit from assembly-style activities helping to scaffold their entry into the space. We explored these criticisms and potential benefits of assembly-style making through developing case studies of video data taken by families in a makerspace. Visitors made creative and personally meaningful creations when engaged in assembly style making. Moreover, assembly-style making mediated a family less comfortable with making to get started in the space alongside ample evidence of families following engineering design processes. Contrary to popular belief, assembly-style making offers an important support to novice makers, without eliminating creativity and engineering design processes, and should be considered in the mix of activities available in makerspaces to support makers of all levels of comfort in making.

The Impact of Leader Humor on Employee Creativity during the COVID-19 Period: The Roles of Perceived Workload and Occupational Coping Self-Efficacy

Based on the relief theory and similarity attraction theory, this study investigates the influence of leader humor on employee creativity through the mediate impact of employees’ perceived workload, occupational coping self-efficacy, and employee similarity perception with a leader as a potential moderator. The data were collected through an online survey that included matched questionnaire data from 351 employees and their direct leaders in China. This study used SPSS 26 software and Mplus 7.0 software to analyze the data and found that (1) leader humor has a significant positive impact on employees’ creativity; (2) employees’ perceived workload and occupational coping self-efficacy mediated the positive relationship between leader humor and employee creativity; (3) similarity perception negatively moderated the influence of leader humor on perceived workload, and it also positively moderated the influence of leader humor on occupational coping self-efficacy. In addition to corroborating and expanding on previous findings regarding the relationship between leader humor and employee creativity during the COVID-19 period, the aforementioned conclusions also derive management implications for fostering employee creativity and reducing employee workload from the perspective of leader humor.

Integrated Constraints in Creativity: Foundations for a Unifying Model

Despite their negative connotation, and the pervasiveness of blue-sky, outside-the-box thinking metaphors, constraints are at the heart of creativity. Using a multidisciplinary approach, as part of the Integrated Constraints in Creativity (IConIC) model, I propose that creative outcomes emerge from the successful leveraging of different types of constraints. I introduce a new, constraint-based definition of creativity, grounded in categorization theory, and parsimonious taxonomies of constraints based on which I outline testable predictions and corroborating evidence. I argue that constraints differ in terms of their flexibility (fixed, faux-fixed, or flexible) and functions (exclusionary or focusing), and in terms of whether they apply to the problem search time or the problem search space. Within the search space, constraints can refer to specific concepts or categories. I also advance a distinction between creativity maximizers and satisficers as a function of creativity goals, semantic networks, expertise, and the new constructs of constraint leveraging power and constraint leveraging mindset, that help to explain differences in successful integration of constraints for creativity and creative achievement.

COVID-19 Lockdown and Creativity: Exploring the Role of Emotions and Motivation on Creative Activities From the Chinese and German Perspectives

For much of 2020, countries around the world fought against the COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries went into lockdown to control the fast spread of the virus. The unusual restrictions and confinement of the lockdown brought about new challenges for people's everyday lives. With flexibility, adaptability, and problem-solving at the core of its nature, creativity has the potential to help people cope with harsh and uncertain circumstances. Were people more, the same, or less creative in their everyday life during the period of lockdown, and in which ways? What are the emotions and motivations underlying their creative or non-creative behaviors? The current study aims to explore these questions from a cross-cultural perspective. A total of 754 comparable employee samples from three Chinese and three German cities were asked about their moods during the lockdown period, their self-rated level of creativity in daily lives before and during the lockdown, and their motivations behind their creative activities. Significant increases in creativity were observed in all everyday activities in both countries with only two exceptions in the German sample. Despite minor differences, a common pattern was found across cultures: whereas the activating positive mood could directly lead to the increase in creativity in some everyday activities, such a direct Mood-Creativity link was limited in the activating negative mood circumstances. In such circumstances, motivation intervened to enable the link to creativity. It was also found that this indirect effect of motivation between mood and creativity was more pronounced with the German participants.

Digital knowledge sharing and creative performance: Work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting social distancing requirements have led to major disruptions in the world of work. The outcomes of the enforced and large-scale work from home (WFH) practices are currently largely unexplored. This study aims to address this gap in the research by investigating the external and internal digital knowledge sharing (DKS) and creative performance (CP) of employees under these extraordinary circumstances. The social capital theory was utilized as the theoretical lens for examining the associations of DKS and CP with demographic, individual, and organizational factors. An online cross-sectional survey was carried out among knowledge workers based in Norway during the pandemic lockdown. The study results indicate that internal and external DKS are significant predictors of CP in the WFH context during the COVID-19 pandemic. Females and older employees are more likely to engage in external DKS than their counterparts. Furthermore, individual motivation is found to be positively associated with internal DKS, external DKS, and CP. The findings suggest that increased use of digital platforms helps increase CP in the WFH setting resulting from the pandemic. Various theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and future research avenues are proposed.

Dancing in chains: Creative practices in/of organizations

According to Friedrich Nietzsche, artists impose restrictions on themselves to encourage creativity and even have a way of “making things difficult” – imposing new constraints on themselves within which they have to dance. At least in the arts, it is difficulty rather than ease which promotes creativity in accordance with this view. This goes beyond the well-known idea of rules and other structures not only restricting but also enabling creativity; it also goes beyond insight into the creativity-enhancing effects of constraints, as recently emphasized in organization studies. Nietzsche adds three dimensions to this dialectic: time and the process of dancing inspired and encouraged by constraints; the opposition of old and new constraints; and the quality of intended, stimulating self-binding. We see this as an opportunity to explore the inspiring potential of Nietzsche’s piece about arts, “Dancing in chains”, when it comes to the different realm of creative practices and creativity in and of organizations. Such an exploration can obviously not aim to offer recipes of how to bring about valuable novelty, but simply intends to identify pertinent themes, issues and questions for organization studies – topics and aspects brought into a new or sharper light when looked at from Nietzsche’s perspective and that of some other philosophers, including Jon Elster’s analyses of constraints in general and of the complications of self-binding in order to promote creativity in particular. Also, we consider Míchel de Certeau’s “silent production” and Martha Feldman’s improvisational routines as being cases of “dancing in chains”.