Facilitating individual creativity through human resource practices: An employees perspective

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Facilitating individual creativity through human
resource practices An employees perspective

• Jian-Min Sun
• De-Pin Yang
• Department of Psychology
• Renmin University of China

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Renmin University of China

• Founded in 1937
• Mainly liberal arts Sciences
• Ranked on the top 5 in China (among 1000)
• Leading faculty Law, Journalism, Economics,
  Sociology, humanity, Business, etc.
• 19,000 full-time and 25,000 part time students
• Exchange or joint programs with Harvard, Yale,
  Columbia, Cornell, Michigan State, etc

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My Grad. Students and me in 2005
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Abstract

• This is an explorative study (first phase of a
  large project) on the perception of employee
  about what HRM practices could facilitate
  individual creativity within organizations.
• Data were collected through in-depth interview,
  open-ended questionnaire and classified by
  subject experts
• 7 dimensions with 79 positive and 37 negative
  practices are identified
• Implications for workplace learning are discussed
  

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Introduction

• Organizational innovation has been a hot topic in
  both the academic and practical fields (Ford
  Gioia, 1995 Hage, 1999).
• Creativity is the seed of all innovation
  (Amabile, Conti, et al, 1996)
• Organizational innovation could be improved by
  enhancing individual creativity.

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Introduction (Cont.)

• How to motivate employees to implement their
  creativity and to further improve organizational
  innovation is becoming an urgent challenge faced
  by most organizations (Amabile,Conti, et al,
  1996Anderson,1998Mumford,2002)?
• The main obstacles for creativity of Chinese
  knowledge workers are the lack of willingness
  (motivation), instead of the shortage of creative
  ability (Sun, 2007).

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Introduction (cont.)

• The traditional psychological approach to
  creativity focuses on the characteristics of
  creative persons (e.g. Barron, 1955, MacKinnon,
  1965 Torrance, 1988 Sternberg, 1995).

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Introduction (Cont.)

• Scholars began to emphasize the role of
  environment that could influence creativity
  either positively or negatively since 1980s.
  (Gryskiewicz Hills,1992 ISaksen,Murdock,Firesti
  en Treffinger,1993)?

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Introduction (cont.)

• Amabile(1988)proposed a componential model of
  creativity, which identified three organizational
  factors that could enhance creativity in
  workplace
• Organizational motivation to innovate
• Resources
• Management practices

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KEYS Emphasizes

• Psychological context of creativity
• The psychological meaning that respondents attach
  to events in their organizations.

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Introduction (Cont.)

• It has been recognized and empirically
  demonstrated that human resource management
  (HRM), as a management practice, could increase
  organizational performance (especially the
  financial outcomes) and the competitive advantage
  (Bae and Lawler, 2000 Becker,1996Delery
  Doty,1996Dyer and Reeves, 1995
  Huselid,1995Hutchinson et al, 2003 Liu Liu,
  2007 Su Zeng, 2007 Yang Zhang, 2002
  Youndt,1996)
• Less research has been done on the relationship
  between HRM and organizational innovation as well
  as individual creativity (Helen, Michael, et al,
  2006 Sun Zhang, 2007)?

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Reward and Creativity

• The emphasis and reward of the organization to
  creative behavior and performance will increase
  creativity to a great deal (Amabile, et al.,1996
  Chandler, 1993 Eisenberger, et al,
  1998,1999,2003)?
• Others argue that too much emphasis on short-term
  performance would undermine creative behavior
  (Bowen Ostroff, 2004 Egan, 2005)

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Performance Appraisal and Creativity

• Most scholars believe that employees level of
  creativity would be decreased when they could
  expect that their job performance would be
  strictly evaluated (Amabile Goldfarb
  Brackfield,1990Shalley Oldham, 1995Zhou
  Oldham, 2001)?
• While others (Harackiewicz Elliot,1993Jussim,
  Ley, et al, 1992)verified that systematic
  performance appraisal would motivate and increase
  the level of creativity.

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Job Characteristics and Creativity

• Most studies demonstrated that job enrichment,
  challenging and complexity, and proper autonomy
  will enhance individual creativity and innovation
  (Amabile, 1997 Ford Kleiner,1987 Hackman
  Oldham, 1980Oldham Cummings, 1996 Tierney
  Farmer, 2004)?

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HR Practices Enhance Creativity

• Reward creative ideas/outcomes
• Extensive training, innovation-based oriented
  training, and role modeling
• Challenging tasks and proper job pressure
• Job enrichment and job rotation
• Combination of individual and team work
• Challenging goals
• Positive performance feedback

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HR Practices Enhance Creativity

• Exploratory learning
• Empowerment
• Multiple recognition
• Participation of decision making
• Diversified team work
• Support from the boss
• Multiple career advancement

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Different Conclusions

• Performance appraisal
• Team work
• Reward methods

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Research Questions

• What types of HRM practices in the eyes of
  employees could enhance the individual creativity
  and in return improve the organizational
  innovation in Chinese organizations?
• To comprehensively tap perceptions (psychological
  context) of employees about all HRM practices
  that might serve as creativity influences.

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Theoretical Framework

• According to contextual theories of
  organizational creativity, it is the
  psychological meaning of environmental events
  that largely influences creative behavior (e.g.
  Amabile, 1988 Cummings, 1965 Woodman, Sawyer,
  et al, 1993).

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Methods

• In-depth interview with 35 professional employees
  in RD, sales, and quality control functions in
  12 firms, including software, insurance,
  manufacturing, bank, and retail.
• Each interview last for one hour to two and half
  hours.
• 128 employees were surveyed with an open-ended
  questionnaire including the same questions.

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Questions Asked

• What management practices or measures in your
  company do you think are good for motivating
  creativity and innovation of employees? Explain
  in detail.
• What practices or measures would hinder the
  implementation of creativity?
• Why do you think those practices are in favor of
  enhancing (hindering) creativity? Give us some
  illustrations or examples.

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Research Methods

• Three Ph.D candidates in management were employed
  to pick up the meaningful practices and designed
  the coding.
• Practices with same meaning or closely related
  with each other were combined and those had no
  relation with HRM were deleted.
• Agreement were calculated with Kendal coefficient
  among three raters after three round individual
  work.
• Frequencies of each practice from both the
  protocol of interviews and questionnaires were
  also recorded.

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Findings

• 1022 practices were obtained totally, among them,
  715 from interviews and 307 from questionnaires.
• 730 practices with positive influence and 292
  with negative influence.
• Averagely, each respondents provided 12
  practices.
• Finally, 116 practices were obtained (79 positive
  and 37 negative)

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Dimensions of the Practices

• Compensation system
• Career advancement
• Training and development
• Performance appraisal
• Job characteristics and conditions
• Corporate culture (Harmonious relationship among
  colleagues innovation climate rules and
  procedures voice of employees)

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Typical Pay Practices

• Pay level is competitive in the local area and in
  the industry
• Reward systems for creative suggestions
• High rate of commission for selling new products
  or service.

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Career Advancement Opportunities

• Expected career advancement
• Link between promotion and creative products
• More opportunities of promotion for creative
  employees.

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Training and Development

• Providing training programs for creative thinking
  and ability
• Experience sharing from higher performers within
  the organization
• Cooperation with research institutions or
  universities

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Job Characteristics

• Have time to relax myself and to think over my
  job
• Interesting job
• I can determine the way to finish my job, no
  intervention from my boss
• Give me more opportunity to learn new things

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Performance Appraisal

• Put more weights on the selling of new products
  for salespeople
• Do not pay too much attention to the short-term
  goals or financial outcomes in the performance
  appraisal for technical employees
• Do not put creativity as a measure of
  performance, otherwise it would become a burden.

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Work Conditions

• Send employees to professional meetings,
  subscribe journals in order to help professionals
  to learn the frontier development
• Sufficient facilities, equipment, and materials
• Clean, quiet, comfortable work environment

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Corporate Culture

• Harmonious relationship
• Social activities of colleagues off-the-work
• Private (personal) relationships beyond work
  relationships
• Caring employees personal life and help to solve
  the life problems
• My supervisor serves as a good work model

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Creative Climate

• Emphasize the importance of creativity in cases
• Allowing mistakes and failure on the job
• Listen to suggestions from employees and put the
  them into practice

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Binding of rules

• Complicated and strict process and procedures
• Too formal (unpractical) procedures resulted in
  the delay of job
• Leaders concern too much about stability, afraid
  of making mistakes, require employees to follow
  the rules
• Too many latent rules in the daily interaction
• Spend too much time to deal with interpersonal
  issues
• Too much team work

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Opportunities for Voice

• Leaders pay no attention to the ideas of
  employees, no demand for innovation
• Quickly reject the suggestions or ideas of
  employees
• Leaders are a law onto oneself, no room for
  employees to contribute their ideas.
• Free and open communication

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Frequencies of the Practices Mentioned
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Implications for Workplace Learning

• Leadership modeling
• Leadership support for learning and creativity
• Role modeling from colleagues
• Sharing of experiences and knowledge
• Learning opportunities within and outside of the
  organization
• Sufficient resources for completing tasks
• Harmonious work and personal relationships
• Simple rules and procedures

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