Assessing The Work Environment for Creativity
Article Reviewed: Amabile, T. M., Conti, R., Coon, H., Lazenby, J., & Herron, M. (1996). Assessing the work environment for creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 39(5), 1154.
Creativity in the Workplace
Good for them (employees). Great for you (managers)
By Senior Editors Jaclyn Jacobson & Paige Phillips.
More and more researchers and managers nowadays realize the importance of creativity in the organization. Unfortunately (and sometimes unintentionally) many managers are killing the creativity of their employees (and thus new ideas and innovation).
How can managers foster creativity in their organization?
The academic article reviewed lends advice to managers who want to foster their employees’ intrinsic motivation and, in turn, their creativity. Doing this will lead to employee satisfaction and retention as well as the generation of new ideas, reinvigorating the organization and even yielding financial gains.
In “Assessing the Work Environment for Creativity,†researchers Teresa Amabile, Regina Conti, Heather Coon, Jeffrey Lazenby, and Michael Herron describe a model for assessing creativity in the work place known as KEYS. The model attempts to measure and predict the potential for creativity taking into account 6 different possible stimulants and 2 possible obstacles.
Factors which encourage creativity include:
- Organizational culture that promotes creativity
- Encouragement from supervisors
- Support from work groups
- Sufficient resources (money, time, etc)
- Challenging work that is equally suited for the employee, and
- Freedom to decide how to carry out your own work.
The two obstacles pointed out are:
- Organizational impediments, such as internal politics, rejection of new ideas, negative competition within the organization, and aversion to risk taking.
- Negative pressures, including unrealistic productivity and time constraints.
Both of these obstacles may discourage intrinsic motivation that allows innovation and creativity to take root, and in doing so they kill the possibility of new ideas.
The researchers found that employee’s perceptions of the presence of stimulants and obstacles to creativity affected their capacity to do their work to the best of their ability.
In that sense, PERCEPTION can be more important than REALITY.
Challenge, organizational encouragement, work group supports, supervisory encouragement, and organizational impediments were found to be the dimensions that affect creativity the most.
Here are some examples of how some organizations are building a culture that fosters creativity (from WSJ – The Work Force of One):
- Clothing chain Men’s Wearhouse Inc. cultivates intrinsic motivation by establishing sales targets for its stores, but allowing employees the freedom to decide how to reach those targets to the best of their ability. “’Stores hit their goals in different ways, and that is not only tolerated but encouraged,’ says Charlie Bresler, president of Men’s Wearhouse.â€
- Software company SAP Americas, promotes supervisory encouragement by making sure that human-resources professionals focus on coaching managers on how to provide informal feedback to their employees through coaching and mentoring.
- Sun Microsystems Inc. insures that their employees feel they have sufficient resources by asking them to identify the type of physical setting that suits them best — a private office, team room, satellite center, or their home office.
These companies offer a culture dedicated to the promotion of intrinsic motivation, and this organizational encouragement surely leads to more creativity and employee satisfaction.
CEOs of other corporations should take heed of the advantages (if not the necessity) of encouraging employee creativity and innovation. Many might offer monetary rewards (extrinsic motivation) to increase employee productivity. This research shows, however, that using the KEYS model will be a more beneficial way for managers to foster organizational creativity.
Establishing an organizational culture of creativity may be a difficult task, requiring work place leaders to completely transform their managerial practices. “However, companies that do it right will have unprecedented opportunities to develop the talent they need to become more competitive, high-performance organizations.†(WSJ – The Work Force of One).
It is definitely most important to motivate employees through acknowledgement more than anything. Giving them a sense of achievement is one of the foremost strategies an employer should use to keep them motivated. That will in turn keep the business owner happy as he / she sees a happy workforce that strives for more of that good “acknowledgement” coming their way. Afterall, we work for the satisfaction. People think it’s for the money but no one is happy in a job that doesn’t pay you with praise and accolades.