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2013 12: 390 originally published online 10 JulyHuman Resource Development ReviewBaek-Kyoo (Brian) Joo, Gary N. McLean and Baiyin Yang

Review and a Conceptual Framework for Future ResearchCreativity and Human Resource Development: An Integrative Literature

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Integrative Literature Review

Creativity and Human Resource Development: An Integrative Literature Review and a Conceptual Framework for Future Research

Baek-Kyoo (Brian) Joo1, Gary N. McLean2, and Baiyin Yang3

AbstractA focus on creativity has increased in the last two decades due to the turbulent changes in the business environment, the fierce competition in the global market, and the knowledge-based economy that has made jobs more complex and mobile. This article discusses the history and transition of creativity research based on three perspectives of creativity: personal characteristics, contextual perspectives, and integrative perspectives. This article also reviews the extant empirical studies that have been published from 2001 to 2012. Furthermore, to stimulate more rigorous creativity research in human resource development (HRD), this article provides a conceptual framework integrating personal factors and contextual factors such as organizational, social/group, and job contexts. Finally, theoretical implications and recommendations for future creativity research in HRD are discussed.

Keywordscreativity, human resource development, HRD

The depth, breadth, and speed of change that engulfs businesses today, along with trends such as globalization, technology advancement, and a knowledge-based econ-omy have put increasing pressure on organizations to be more creative (Ford & Gioia,

1Winona State University, Winona, MN, USA2McLean Global Consuling, St. Paul, MN, USA3Tsinghua University, Beijing, P. R. China

Corresponding Author:Baek-Kyoo (Brian) Joo, Assistant Professor of Human Resource Management, College of Business, Winona State University, Somsen Hall 302, Winona, MN 55987-5838, USA. Email: [email protected]

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Joo et al. 391

1995; Kim & Mauborgne, 2005). Creativity has become and will remain indispensable as organizations and their environments fundamentally change (Ford & Gioia, 1995), and as jobs for knowledge workers become more complex and work designs include more autonomy (Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Parker, Wall, & Cordery, 2001). Organizations strive to create new demands or blue oceans that denote all the indus-tries not in existence todaythe unknown or untapped market space, untainted by competition (Kim & Mauborgne, 2004, p. 78). Therefore, to survive, adapt, and gain competitive advantage, organizations need to unleash their employees innate creative potential because employees creative ideas can be used as building blocks for organi-zational innovation, change, and competitiveness (Amabile, 1988; Woodman, Sawyer, & Griffin, 1993; Zhou & George, 2003).

Creativity does not magically come from an invisible hand; it comes from people. Human assets are regarded as the primary source of value, growth, and sustained com-petitive advantage (Barney, 1991; Pfeffer, 1994; Prahalad & Hamel, 1990). In the 1960s, Drucker (1992) foresaw the emergence of knowledge workers who could apply theoretical and analytical knowledge that were acquired through formal education to developing new products or services. Today, human creativity is recognized as a criti-cal economic resource since creativity is ultimately what raises productivity and thus raises living standards (Florida, 2002). Dividing the economy into three sectorscreativity, manufacturing, and serviceFlorida (2002) advocated for an increased emphasis on the creative sector that consists of people who add economic value through their creativity. One third of workers in the United States, including scientists, engineers, artists, musicians, designers, and knowledge-based professionals, fall into the creative class sector, and they generate half of the nations total income (Florida, 2002, 2005).

Although it is undeniable that creativity stems from individual ability, whether or not individual creativity is activated, exercised, and channeled into a final product or service is a function of the work environment, or contextual characteristics that may be involved in stimulating and supporting creativity (Amabile, 1996; Lubart, 1999; Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004). Thus the major components of these contextual characteristics can be categorized into job, group, and organizational-level factors (Shalley & Gilson, 2004).

Problem Statement and Research Purpose

The number of studies on creativity has drastically increased during the past two decades. Searching Business Source Premiere using the keyword, creativity, we found 143 full-text scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles published between 1981 and 1990, 442 articles between 1991 and 2000, and 1,237 articles between 2001 and 2010. While research on creativity in management and psychology has exponentially increased for the last three decades, studies on creativity among human resource development (HRD) scholars have been scarce. More specifically, of the approxi-mately 190 papers presented at the 2006 Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD) conference, only one paper was on organizational creativity and two papers


392 Human Resource Development Review 12(4)

were on innovation performance. Among the 225 presentations and sessions in the 2011 AHRD conference proceedings, only two papers were about creativity and three were on innovation. According to the program book of the 2012 AHRD conference, of the 207 sessions including full papers, abstracts, roundtables, innovative sessions, and poster sessions, no sessions discussed creativity or innovation in organizations. Among all the articles published in the four HRD journals, we found 18 articles about creativ-ity: 7 from Human Resource Development Quarterly (HRDQ), 2 from Human Resource Development International (HRDI), 2 from Human Resource Development Review (HRDR), and 7 from Advances in Developing Human Resources (ADHR). Empirical research on creativity in HRD is even scarcer. We found only one empirical paper out of those 18 published articles. Furthermore, all the articles in the special issue of ADHR that featured creativity in HRD in 2005 were conceptual papers.

Content knowledge, creative process skills, motivation, and creative self-efficacy can be enhanced by training or learning (Amabile, 1996; Unsworth & Parker, 2003). They are all in the domain of HRD. Since HRD provides learning and development in individual and organizational dimensions (Joo & McLean, 2006), we believe HRD can play a pivotal role in enhancing employee creativity and in building a more appropri-ate contextual environment for creativity by providing employees with learning and development opportunities and by changing the organizational culture and practices. However, HRD scholars have paid little attention to creativity research with no focus on theory building to guide future research. More attention to creativity is needed from HRD researchers and practitioners who need knowledge and skills to create connec-tions between creativity and HRD (Egan, 2005; Waight, 2005). This study attempts to respond to this urgent need.

The purpose of this article is to review the history and transition of creativity research, discussing three perspectives on creativity. The various definitions of creativ-ity are presented based on the literature review. Then we discuss the history of creativity research from three perspectives: personal, contextual, and integrative views. This arti-cle also aims to investigate the extant empirical studies. We present a brief literature review of empirical studies on creativity in the workplace that have been published from 2001 to 2012. Finally, this study is to provide a conceptual framework to simulate more rigorous creativity research in HRD. Based on the integrative view, we suggest potential constructs for creativity research in HRD including personal factors as well as contextual factors (i.e., organizational, social, and job contexts).

Transition of Creativity Research

This literature overview focuses on published research on employee creativity in the workplace, the majority of which has been published within the last two decades. Books and book chapters on the general topic of creativity in the workplace have also appeared in the last decade. The history of transition of creativity research is based on the nine major literature review and conceptual papers (i.e., Drazin, Glynn, & Kazanjian, 1999; Ford, 1996; George, 2007; Morris & Leung, 2010; Mumford, 2000; Shalley et al., 2004; Shalley & Gilson, 2004; Woodman et al., 1993; Zhou & Shalley, 2003).


Joo et al. 393

Traditionally, most studies on creativity have focused on personal characteristics, such as personality and cognitive ability, and on the creative few individuals (Feist, 1998; McCrae & Costa, 1997; Tierney, Farmer, & Graen, 1999). Attention has since moved away from the individual focus and the creative few toward the contextual view and then toward the integrative view (Sternberg & Lubart, 1999; Zhou & Shalley, 2003). Research on the impact of contextual characteristics on creativity has increased since the late 1980s and early 1990s (Amabile, 1996; Amabile & Conti, 1999; Amabile & Gryskiewicz, 1989; George & Zhou, 2001; West & Farr, 1990; Zhou, 2003; Zhou & Shalley, 2003) but most research has relied on measures to assess contextual factors at only one level (i.e., organizational, group, or job level; Zhou & Shalley, 2003). In 1993, Woodman et al. developed an interactionist (or interactional) model of creativ-ity, arguing that employee creativity is influenced by cross-level factors (i.e., organi-zational, group, and individual factors). Although many researchers have suggested that the integrative view of creativity is important (Amabile, 1995; Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Sternberg & Lubart, 1999; Woodman et al., 1993), empirical research investi-gating the interaction of the contextual and personal characteristics and their effects on employee creativity has increased in the last 10 years or so.

Creativity Defined

A variety of definitions of creativity are presented in Table 1. Much of the empirical research has defined creativity as an outcome, focusing on the production of new and useful ideas concerning products, services, processes, and procedures (Amabile, 1996; Ford, 1995; Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Shalley, 1991; Zhou, 1998). Using this defi-nition, research has examined creative solutions to business problems, creative busi-ness strategies, and creative changes in job processes (Ford & Gioia, 2000; Taggar, 2002; West & Anderson, 1996). Creative outcomes can range from minor adaptations in workflow or products to major breakthroughs and development of new products or processes (Mumford & Gustafson, 1988). Gardner (1993) contrasted little C creativitythe sort which all of us evince in our daily livesand big C creativitythe kind of breakthrough which occurs only very occasionally (p. 29). Csikszentmihalyi (1996) seemed to agree with this idea. In a similar vein, Boden (1991) distinguished between psychological (P) creativity and historical (H) creativity (Nickerson, 1999). While P creativity has to do with idea generation at a personal level, H creativity has to do with ideas that are fundamentally novel with respect to the whole of human history (Boden, 1991, p. 32).

Creativity is useful novelty. Both novelty and usefulness are necessary conditions for an idea or solution to be judged creative. Few people would question that an idea must contain some element of novelty or originality to be considered creative. To be considered creative in the context of creativity at work, however, novelty is not enough; ideas must also be useful. A novel idea that has no potential value is unusual, but not creative (Zhou & George, 2003). This definition includes creative solutions to business problems, creative business strategies, and creative changes in work pro-cesses. In this study, we define creativity as the development of ideas about products,



services, practices, processes, and procedures that are judged to be (a) original and novel, and (b) appropriate and potentially useful (Amabile, 1996; Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Robinson & Stern, 1997; Shalley, 1991; Shalley et al., 2004; Woodman et al., 1993; Zhou & George, 2001; Zhou & Shalley, 2003).

Creativity and innovation are closely related and overlapping concepts, but they are not interchangeable. Creativity and innovation have often been studied in isolation by researchers using different methodologies and models (Sternberg & Lubart, 1999). Creativity has been studied in psychology at the individual level, while innovation has been studied in economics and management at the organizational level. Organizational scientists and innovation researchers dene innovation as the intentional introduction and application within a role, group or organization of ideas, processes, products or pro-cedures, new to the relevant unit of adoption, designed to signicantly benet the indi-vidual, the group, the organization or wider society (West & Farr, p. 9). While creativity refers to the production of novel and useful ideas in any domain, innovation is defined as the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization (Amabile, 1996). Creativity is important in and of itself and can be conceptualized as a necessary precon-dition required for innovation. Thus creativity is the seed of innovation.

However, the link between the two is not straightforward and linear (King, 1995, p. 87). Innovative organizations are those that introduce new technologies or manage-ment techniques pertaining to products, services, and processes earlier than their com-petitors. Creative individuals may influence all stages of the innovation process, but organizational innovation requires more than creativity. Success or failure of innova-tion depends on many factors, both within and outside of an organization, from employee relations to market and regulatory forces. That is, creativity requires novel ideas, whereas innovation can be based on ideas that are adopted from external sources. Therefore, creativity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for innovation. It is noted that this study is concerned solely with creativity and the factors that affect cre-ativity in an organization.

Table 1. Definitions of Creativity.

Author(s) Definition

Amabile (1996) The quality of products or responses judged to be creative by appropriate observers, and . . . the process by which something so judged is produced (p. 33).

Csikszentmihalyi (1996)

Any act, idea, or product that changes an existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one (p.28). Domain consists of a set of symbolic rules and procedures.

Ford (1995) A context-specific, subjective judgment of the novelty and value of an outcome of an individuals or a collectives behaviour (p. 17).

Woodman (1995) The creation of a valuable, useful new product, service, idea, procedure, or process by individuals working within a complex social organization (p. 293).


Joo et al. 395

Three Perspectives of Creativity Research

Traditionally, research on creativity has focused on individual characteristics. Later, the concept of contextual characteristics or work environment on employee creativity impacted the creativity literature. Recently, the integrative perspective of creativity that integrates the two characteristics has emerged. More detailed information and major findings of each perspective are described in this section, based on the nine major integrative literature review papers mentioned previously.

Personal characteristics view. Creativity research has a long history in psychology. Such research has focused on identifying individuals with personal characteristics or cogni-tive ability that can be especially effective at recognizing problems or at combining new information that may enable them to produce more creative work (Shalley et al., 2004). In addition, it has also focused on the development of tests to assess and iden-tify creative individuals, or methods for developing the creative skills of individuals (Shalley et al., 2004).

Research has found that creative individuals tend to be independent, self-confident, unconventional, achievement-oriented, and more risk-taking, and to have wide interests and a greater openness to experiences (Ford, 1995; Simonton, 2000). Creative individuals also tend to have a discovery orientation that leads them to view situations from multiple perspectives, to find problems, and to ask novel questions (Csikszentmihalyi & Getzels, 1988). Creativity research on personality, traits, skills, experiences, motivation, and intelligence is reviewed in more detail below.

First, researchers, such as Amabile (1988) and Eysenck (1993) have noted that certain personality traits often characterize creative people. Researchers have identi-fied a set of core personality traits that are reasonably stable across fields and result in some individuals being more creative than others. These traits include broad interests, independence of judgment, autonomy, and a firm sense of self as creative, self-confident, attracted to complexity, aesthetically oriented, and risk-taking (Shalley & Gilson, 2004; Sternberg & Lubart, 1999). Finally, proactive individuals look for opportunities and act on them, show initiative, take action, and are persistent in successfully imple-menting change (Crant, 2000). Proactivity, which is a complex construct that has important personal and organizational consequences (Crant, 2000), involves many aspects of the traits mentioned above.

Second, creative performance requires a set of creativity-relevant skills (Amabile, 1988), which can be defined as the ability to think creatively, generate alternatives, engage in divergent thinking, and/or suspend judgment (Shalley & Gilson, 2004). These skills are necessary because creativity requires a cognitive-perceptual style that involves the collection and application of diverse information, use of effective heuris-tics, an accurate memory, and the ability to concentrate for long periods of time (Amabile, 1988). In addition, skills such as problem finding, problem construction, combination, and idea evaluation are important for creativity (Mumford, Baughman, Maher, Costanza, & Supinski, 1997).



Third, having depth and breadth of knowledge has been linked to individual creativ-ity. Domain-specific knowledge reflects an individuals level of education, training, experience, and knowledge within a particular context (Gardner, 1993). Thus HRD can directly and indirectly affect employee creativity. For example, education provides exposure to a variety of knowledge bases, viewpoints, and experiences. It also rein-forces the use of experimentation and problem-solving skills, and it cognitively devel-ops individuals so that they are more likely to use multiple and diverse perspectives and more complicated schemas. Training can provide employees with guidance on how to generate novel ideas as a part of what they do and enhance an individuals creative thinking skills and problem-solving ability (Shalley & Gilson, 2004). In this vein, cre-ativity can be greatly enhanced by HRD efforts in organizations.

Fourth, it would be difficult to be creative in an area without having some experi-ence in what has historically been constituted as routine or the status quo (Shalley & Gilson, 2004). Experience in a field is a necessary component for employee creativity because an individual needs some level of familiarity to perform creative work. While task familiarity can lead to more habitual performance (Ford, 1995), it can also pro-vide the opportunity to prepare for creativity through deliberate practice of task domain skills and activities (Shalley & Gilson, 2004).

Fifth, creativity also requires some level of passion or internal forces that push individuals to persevere in the face of challenges that are inherent to creative work. A number of studies on individual creativity have focused on the importance of intrinsic motivation (i.e., feelings of competence and self-determination on a given task) for creativity (Amabile, 1988; Shalley, 1991). For example, R&D professionals have reported that intrinsic motivation is critical for creativity (Amabile & Gryskiewicz, 1989). Focusing on motivation for creativity, a number of theorists have hypothesized about the relevance of intrinsic motivation, the need for order, the need for achieve-ment, and other motives (Amabile, 1996).

Finally, one of the widely held beliefs on creativity is that a persons creativity increases with intelligence. Only modest correlations have been reported between gen-eral intelligence and creativity (Nickerson, 1999). Intelligence may enable creativity to some degree. Thus, once a person has enough intelligence to function in ones work, this relationship no longer holds (Robinson & Stern, 1997).

For many years, the personality characteristics perspective of creativity has been the most common approach, using psychometric methodologies and cognitive psy-chology. Creativity was generally viewed as being difficult to train for, as the loci of creativity are within the individual, and the expression in creative products is influ-enced by random acts of chance or serendipity (Williams & Yang, 1999). A critical limitation of this approach, however, is that it focuses only on identifying individual differences related to creativity, ignoring the impact of real-life contexts on creativity. Later, important and distinctive contributions have emerged from the efforts of several psychologists who have employed alternative investigative approaches (Amabile, 1988, 1996; Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Ford, 1995; Gardner, 1993). Table 2 summarized the studies that examined the influences of personal and contextual factors on employee creativity for the last 12 years.


Joo et al. 397

Table 2. Summary of Empirical Studies on Creativity From an Integrative Perspective.

Author(s) Personal factors Contextual factors Level of analysis Journal

George and Zhou (2001)

Openness to experience

Conscientiousness

Feedback valenceUnclear endsUnclear meansMultiple meansClose monitoringInaccurate communicationUnhelpful coworkersNegative work environment

Individual JAP

Zhou and George (2001)

Job dissatisfaction Individual AMJFeedback from coworkers Support from coworkers Perceived organizational

support for creativity

Taggar (2002)

Five-factor model (Big-5)

General cognitive ability

Task motivationDomain relevant skillsCreativity relevant

processes

Individual creativity-relevant processes

Group creativity-relevant processes

Individual AMJGroup

Baer, Oldham, and Cummings (2003)

Cognitive style Job complexity Individual LQExtrinsic rewards

Farmer, Tierney, and Kung-McIntyre (2003)

Creative role identitySelf-views for past

creative behavior

Perceived coworker expectations for creativity

Individual AMJ

Perceived organizational valuing of creativity

Jaussi and Dionne (2003)

Intrinsic motivation Transformational leadership Individual LQUnconventional leader

behavior

Leader as creative role model

Jung, Chow, and Wu (2003)

Empowerment Individual LQTransformational leadership Group Support for innovation

Shin and Zhou (2003) Conservation Transformational leadership Individual AMJ Intrinsic motivation Company support for

creativity

Zhou (2003) Creative personality Close monitoring of supervisors

Individual JAP

Presence of creative coworkers

Supervisor developmental feedback

Amabile, Schatzel, Moneta, and Kramer (2004)

Perceived leader support Individual LQ- Instrumental support - Socioemotional support

Leader behavior Alge, Ballinger,

Tangirala, and Oakley (2006)

Psychological empowerment Individual JAPInformation privacy - Perceived legitimacy

- Information gathering control

(continued)




- Information handling control

Familiarity with coworkers Status relative to coworkers Fong (2006) Emotional ambivalence Individual AMJ Unusual emotional

experience

George and Zhou (2007)

Positive moodNegative mood

Supervisor developmental feedback

Individual AMJ

Supervisor interactional justice

Trust in the supervisor Joo (2007) Proactive personality Organizational learning

cultureIndividual Dissertation

LMX quality Job complexity Shin and Zhou (2007) Team creativity

efficacyTransformational leadership Group JAP

Average team tenure Wu, McMullen,

Neubert, and Yi (2008)

Leadership regulatory focus Individual JBV- Promotion-focused - Prevention-focused

Baer, Oldham, Jacobson, and Hollingshead (2008)

Big-five personality Group JCBTeam creative efficacy

Cohen-Meitar, Carmeli, and Waldman (2009)

Feeling of vitality Organizational identity Individual CRJSense of positive

regard and mutualityOrganization-based

self-esteem

Perceived external prestigeJob challengeFreedom

Gong, Huang, and Farh (2009)

Learning orientation Transformational leadership Individual AMJCreative self-efficacy

Gumusluoglu and Ilsev (2009)

Intrinsic motivation Psychological empowerment Individual JBRTransformational leadership Perception of support for

innovation

Hirst, Knippenberg, and Zhou (2009)

Goal orientation Team learning behavior Individual AMJ- Learning

orientation

- Avoidance orientation

- Approach orientation

Kim, Hon, and Crant (2009)

Proactive personality Career satisfaction Individual JBPPerceived insider status

Shalley, Gilson, and Blum (2009)

Creative personalityIntrinsic motivationCognitive styleNegative affectivityGrowth need strength

Job complexity Individual AMJSupportive work context

Table 2. (continued)

(continued)


Joo et al. 399


Simmons and Ren (2009)

Goal orientation Individual CRJ- Learning

orientation

- Avoid orientation - Prove orientation Wang and Cheng

(2009) Creative role identity Benevolent leadership Individual JOB

Job autonomy Zhou, Shin, Brass, Choi,

and Zhang (2009) Conformity Weak/strong ties Individual JAP

Density Baer, Leenders,

Oldham, and Vadera (2010)

Collaboration Individual AMJIntergroup competition Membership change

Bechtoldt, De Dreu, Carsten, Nijstad, and Choi (2010)

Motivated information processing

Group JPSP

Epistemic social tuning Kim, Hon, and Lee

(2010) Proactive personalityJob creativity

requirement

Supervisor support for creativity

Individual CRJ

Liao, Liu, and Loi (2010) Self-efficacy Leadermember exchange

(LMX) qualityIndividualGroup

AMJ

Teammember exchange (TMX) quality

LMX differentiation TMX differentiation Ohly and Fritz (2010) Proactive behavior Work characteristics Individual JOB Challenge appraisal Pieterse, van

Knippenberg, Schippers, and Stam (2010)

Psychological empowermentTransformational leadershipTransactional leadership

Individual JOB

Raja and John (2010) Big-five personality Job scope Individual HRSagiv, Arieli,

Goldenberg, and Goldchmidt (2010)

Cognitive style Task structure Individual JOB

Sweetman, Luthans, Avey, and Luthans (2011)

Psychological capital Individual CJAS

Sun, Zhang, Qu, and Chen (2012)

Psychological empowerment Individual LQTransformational leadership

Tsai, Chi, Grandey, and Fung (2011)

Positive group affective tone Group JOBTeam trust

Yoon, Song, Lim, and Joo (2010)

Organizational learning culture

Group HRDI

Knowledge sharing Zhang and Bartol

(2010)

Empowerment role identity

Intrinsic motivation

Psychological empowermentEmpowering leadershipLeader encouragement of

creativityCreative process engagement

Individual AMJ

Chen, Shih, and Yeh

(2011)

Individual initiative Skill variety Individual IJHRMKnowledge specificity Creative resources


(continued)




Cheung and Wong (2011)

Transformation leadership Individual LODJLeader support

Grant and Berry (2011) Intrinsic motivation Individual AMJ Prosocial motivation Perspective taking Mathisen (2011) Creative self-efficacy Task type Individual CIM Task autonomy LMX quality Collegial support for

creativity

Zhang, Tsui, and Wang (2011)

Collective efficacy Transformational leadership Group LQAuthoritarian leadership Knowledge sharing

Zhou, Hirst, and Shipton (2011)

Participation Leader intellectual stimulation

Promotional focus

Individual JOB

Gong, Cheung, Wang, and Huang (2012)

Proactivity Information exchange Individual JOMPsychological safety

perspectives

Joo, Song, Lim, and Yoon (2012)

Perceived learning culture Group IJTDDevelopmental feedback

Team cohesion Rego, Sousa, Marques,

and Cunha (2012)Psychological capital Authentic leadership Individual JBR

Volmer, Spurk, and Niessen (2012)

Job autonomy Individual LQLMX quality

Creative work involvement Zhou, Hirst, and

Shipton (2012)Creative self-efficacy Problem-solving demand Individual JAPIntrinsic motivation

Somech and Drach-Zahav (2013)

Aggregated individual creative personality

Team compositionTeam climate for innovationFunctional heterogeneity

Group JOM

Note. AMJ = Academy of Management Journal, CIM = Creativity and Innovation Management, CJAC = Canadian Journal of Administrative Science, CRJ = Creative Research Journal, HR = Human Relations, HRDI = Human Resource Development International, IJHRM = International Journal of Human Resource Management, IJTD = International Journal of Training and Development, JAP = Journal of Applied Psychology, JBR = Journal of Business Research, JBP = Journal of Business and Psychology, JBV = Journal of Business Venturing, JCB = Journal of Creative Behavior, JOB = Journal of Organizational Behavior, JOM = Journal of Management, JPSP = Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, LODJ = Leadership and Organization Development Journal, LQ = The Leadership Quarterly.


Contextual characteristics view. Although it is undeniable that creativity stems from individual ability, whether or not individual creativity is activated, exercised, and channeled into the final products or services is a function of the work environment, or the contextual characteristics. For instance, a manager may oversee employees who are working toward creative outcomes. A key component that is necessary for creativ-ity is the context within which the creativity takes place, because creative outcomes cannot and do not occur in a vacuum. Mumford, Scott, Gaddis, and Strange (2002)


Joo et al. 401

stated that creative work is being contextualized so that the success of creativity depends on the capabilities, pressures, resources, and the sociotechnical system.

Contextual characteristics refer to dimensions of the work environment that poten-tially influence an employees creativity but that are not part of the individual (Shalley et al., 2004, p. 935). These characteristics include the job (or work) setting and social relationships with supervisors and coworkers. The theoretical work of Amabile (1988, 1996) serves as a general framework that describes a variety of relevant factors that can either enhance or stifle employee creativity. Focusing on this contextual view, researchers in management began to conduct creativity research, borrowing ideas from the fields of psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology, and others to establish its scholarly roots (Ford, 1995).

Amabile (1988, 1996) recognized that different environmental models can serve either to promote or to inhibit creativity. Arguing that the work environment can influence both the level and the frequency of employees creative behavior, Amabile (1995, 1996) identified stronger and weaker dimensions of work environment fac-tors: (a) organizational encouragement and support for creativity (e.g., fair judgment of new ideas, recognition for creative work, and encouragement to take risks); (b) super-visory encouragement (e.g., clear overall goal-setting and openness to new ideas); (c) work group support (e.g., open, trusting communication within a challenging, com-mitted group of skilled coworkers); (d) sufficient resources (e.g., facilities, money, and information); (e) challenging work that is perceived as important; and (f) freedom in deciding how to do ones work. The low-creativity projects were higher on organiza-tional impediments to creativity (e.g., political problems, excessive criticism of new ideas, destructive competition, and an emphasis on maintaining the status quo), and workload/time pressure. (Amabile, 1995)

Integrative view. Theories have suggested that a confluence of environment-centered variables and person-centered variables (i.e., intelligence, knowledge, cognitive styles, personality, and motivation) are necessary for creativity research (Amabile, 1996; Csikszentmyhali, 1996; Sternberg & Lubart, 1999). As Sternberg and Lubart (1999) stated, unidisciplinary approaches to creativity tend to view a part of the phenomenon as the whole phenomenon, often resulting in what is a narrow, unsatisfying vision of creativity. Much recent work on creativity has hypothesized that multiple components must converge for creativity to occur (Amabile, 1996; Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Gard-ner, 1993).

According to Woodman (1995), creative behavior is an interaction of person and situation. This interactional perspective regards creative behavior of employees as a complex personcontext interaction influenced by events of the past as well as salient aspects of the current situation (Woodman et al., 1993, p. 294). Arguing that creativ-ity is the complex product of a persons behavior in a given situation, several authors have suggested a more comprehensive theory of organization creativity encompassing (a) the creative process, (b) the creative product, (c) the creative person, (d) the cre-ative situation, and (e) the way in which each of these components interacts with the others (Woodman et al., 1993). In other words, the gestalt of creative output (new



products, services, ideas, procedures, and processes) for the entire system comes from the complex mosaic of individual, group, and organizational characteristics and behaviors occurring within the salient situational influences existing at each level of organization (Woodman et al., 1993, p. 296). In this study, we used the term, integra-tive view, instead of interactional view since the latter could be misleading in an inter-actional analysis.

Empirical Research on Creativity since 2001

The majority of empirical studies on creativity in an organization published for the last 12 years have mostly been in management and industrial and organizational (I/O) psychology journals. We reviewed 50 empirical studies that were published from 2001 to 2012 in the above journals as well as HRD journals. Articles for this review were identified through searches of Business Source Premier and Google Scholar databases (through July, 2012), using one keyword, creativity. Then we reviewed the titles and the abstracts of those articles. While there are a number of articles about creativity in diverse fields, only the articles that focused on creativity in organizations were included in this study due to the difference of the foci. Particular attention was paid to works that had been extensively cited in major journals. A few articles that are less relevant to HRD were excluded.

Table 2 summarizes the key constructs of these studies. Most articles reviewed in this article are based on management (Academy of Management Journal: 13, Leadership Quarterly: 7, Journal of Management: 2, and others: 8) and cognitive, social, industrial/organizational psychology (Journal of Applied Psychology: 6, Journal of Organizational Behavior: 6, and others: 5). The rest were HRD-related journals: one each from Human Resource Development International, Leadership and Organization Development Journal, and International Journal of Training and Development.

In terms of level of analysis, 39 articles focused on individual creativity, whereas 11 were group-level research. Three studies examined creativity at both the individual and group levels. About 70% was integrative research, examining both personal and contextual factors in each study. Frequently used constructs for personal characteris-tics included Big-5 personality, cognitive style, creative efficacy, goal orientation, pro-activity, conformity, intrinsic motivation, psychological empowerment, and psychological capital. Contextual factors included leader support, coworkers support, organizational support, job characteristics, and rewards. Constructs that are relevant to HRD are discussed in more detail in the following section.

A Framework for Creativity Research in HRD

Based on the integrative perspective and the review of previous empirical studies, we present a conceptual framework of creativity to stimulate more rigorous and relevant creativity research in the field of HRD. Shalley et al. (2004), in their integrative review of creativity research, suggested a four-dimension model including personal


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characteristics (e.g., learning/training of content knowledge, creative process skills, motivation, creative self-efficacy, and personality) and three contextual factors: orga-nizational context (e.g., organizational culture, organizational support for creativity), social context (e.g., coworkers, leadership, and leader development), and job context (e.g., job redesign, job empowerment, job engagement). This framework was derived from earlier creativity theories that emphasized the importance of personcontext interactions (or integrative perspective), which is premised on the idea that creativity is an individual-level phenomenon that can be affected by both personal and situa-tional variables (e.g., Amabile, 1996; Shalley et al., 2004; Woodman et al., 1993; Zhou & Shalley, 2003). Adopting the typology of Shalley et al. (2004), we propose the potential constructs that are relevant to HRD.

Personal Characteristics

Traditional creativity research has focused on personality, traits, skills, experiences, motivation, and intelligence. Using three interlocking circles to represent each of the three components of creativity (i.e., domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant pro-cesses, and intrinsic task motivation), Amabile (1988) illustrated that the area of over-lap among the elements indicates the area of highest creativity for individuals and highest innovation for organizations. Thus the key for organizations is to identify this creativity intersection for each individual and to enable the concurrent development of the skills, processes, and motivation that are central to creative performance. Managers and HRD professionals can enhance employee creativity by providing training pro-grams and learning and development opportunities.

Personality has received substantial attention in the creativity literature. Previous studies have selected trait-like character strengths and virtues that tend to exhibit con-siderable stability over time (Peterson & Seligman, 2004), such as Big-5 personality and core self-evaluations (e.g., Baer et al., 2008; George & Zhou, 2001; Raja & John, 2010; Taggar, 2002), goal orientation (e.g., Gong, Huang, & Farh, 2009; Hirst, Van Knippenberg, & Zhou, 2009; Simmons & Ren, 2009), intrinsic motivation (e.g., Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Jaussie & Dionne, 2003; Shalley et al., 2009; Shin & Zhou, 2003; Zhang & Bartol, 2010), proactivity (e.g., Gong et al., 2010; Joo, 2007; Kim, Hon, & Crant, 2009; Kim, Hon, & Lee, 2010; Ohly & Fritz, 2009), and psycho-logical capital (e.g., Rego et al., 2012; Sweetman et al., 2011). Within the domain of the workplace, employees traits have been emphasized for effective recruitment, selection, and placement (Luthans, Youssef, & Avolio, 2007). As proxies for personal characterisics, we suggest the use of core selfevaluation, goal orientation, proactive personality, and psychological capital.

Core self-evaluation is a foundational higher order concept of an individuals self-evaluation of his or her personal characteristics (Judge, Erez, Bono, & Thresen, 2002). Core self-evaluations include four specific subfactors of personality traits: self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, locus of control, and emotional stability, also known as neu-roticism (Judge et al., 2002). Goal orientation refers to the goals pursued by individu-als in achievement situations. Goal orientation is a motivational variable expected to



affect the allocation of effort during learning (Fisher & Ford, 1998). Goal orientation can be classified into two categories: learning (task or mastery) orientation, and per-formance (ego/social) orientation (Farr, Hofmann, & Ringenbach, 1993). Performance goal orientation refers to a desire to demonstrate ones competence to others and to receive positive evaluations from others. Ability is a fixed, uncontrollable, personal attribute and, therefore, extra effort indicates low ability (Bell & Kozlowski, 2002; Fisher & Ford, 1998). Individuals with high performance goal orientation are inter-ested in demonstrating task competence by gaining positive and avoiding negative judgments of competence. Learning goal orientation refers to a desire to increase ones competence by developing new skills and mastering new situations. Individuals with high learning goal orientation focus on increasing their learning and/or task com-petence, seeking challenges, and persisting in the case of failure (Dweck & Legget, 1988). Proactive personality is defined as a belief in ones ability to overcome con-straints by situational forces and the ability to affect changes in the environment (Bateman & Crant, 1993). Thus proactivity is a complex, multiple-caused construct that has important personal and organizational consequences (Crant, 2000). More spe-cifically, Crant (2000, p. 436) described proactive behavior as taking initiative in improving current circumstances or creating new one; it involves challenging the sta-tus quo rather than passively adapting to present conditions.

While it is necessary to select the right people and place them in the right places for effective human resource management, they are insufficient to sustain the competitiveness of an organization. That is, focusing on character strengths, positive virtues, and other rela-tively stable personality traits is less cost-effective in todays business environment charac-terized by high turnover rates and an emphasis on continuous learning and development of employees and organizations. In fact, there has been little personality research in HRD because it cannot be easily developed. In addition to the previous personal characteristics, we also propose that future HRD researchers use more state-like (rather than trait-like) positive capacities that are open to development and improvement using relatively brief training programs, on-the-job activities, and short micro-interventions (Luthans, Avey, Avolio, Norman, & Combs, 2006). One such construct is psychological capital that is defined as a higher order positive construct comprised of the four-facet constructs of self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and resiliency (Luthans et al., 2007).

Organizational Context

Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby, and Herron (1996) and Woodman et al. (1993) sug-gested a number of characteristics in an attempt to determine what creates a climate that supports creativity. Previous research has examined the influence of organiza-tional support on creativity (e.g., Farmer, Tierney, & Kung-McIntyre, 2003; Gumusluoglu & Ilsev, 2009; Joo, 2007; Joo et al., 2012; Jung, & Chow, & Wu, 2003; Yoon et al., 2010; Zhou & George, 2001). Although organizational contexts impose a special set of conditions on creativity, there still is a lack of empirical studies. Of the 50 studies we reviewed, seven studies examined perceived organizational support or organizational culture as a distal antecedent of employee creativity.


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At the organizational level, we recommend the use of organizational learning cul-ture as one of the key contextual components encouraging employee creativity. By definition, a learning organization refers to an organization skilled at creating, acquir-ing, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowl-edge and insights (Garvin, 1993, p. 80). Stressing a systems perspective, Senge (1990) depicted learning organizations as places where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together (p. 1). Thus a learning organization involves an environment in which organizational learning is structured so that team-work, collaboration, creativity, and knowledge processes have a collective meaning and value (Confessore & Kops, 1998).

The concepts of organizational learning culture and/or organizational learning pro-cess have received increasing attention in the field of HRD, in general, and organiza-tion development (OD), in particular. One of the most critical issues, however, has been the lack of practical and validated measurement tools (Holton, Bates, & Ruona, 2000; Song, Joo, & Chermack, 2009; Yang, Watkins, & Marsick, 2004) until the dimensions of learning organization questionnaire (DLOQ) was developed (Yang et al., 2004). Watkins and Marsicks (1997) framework for a learning organization served as another theoretical base for this study. They identified seven action impera-tives for a learning organization: (a) create continuous learning opportunities; (b) pro-mote inquiry and dialogue; (c) encourage collaboration and team learning; (d) establish systems to capture and share learning; (e) empower people to have a collective vision; (f) connect the organization to the environment, and (g) use leaders who model and support learning at the individual, team, and organization levels.

Social Context

To date, most research has focused on coworkers influence on creativity (e.g., Alge, Ballinger, Tangirala, & Oakley, 2006; Farmer et al., 2003; George & Zhou, 2001, 2007; Gong, Cheung, Wang, & Huang, 2012; Mathisen, 2011; Tsai, Chi, Grandey, & Fung, 2011; Zhou & George, 2001) and leaders influence on creativity (e.g., Amabile, Schatzel, Moneta, & Kramer, 2004; Cheung & Wong, 2011; Jaussie & Dionne, 2003; Jung et al., 2003; Gong et al., 2009; Gumusluoglu & Ilseb, 2009; Joo, 2007; Joo et al., 2012; Kim et al., 2010, Liao et al., 2010; Mathisen, 2011; Pieterse, Knippenberg, Chippers, & Stam, 2010; Rego et al., 2012; Shin & Zhou, 2003, 2007; Sun, Zhang, Qi, Chen, 2012; Volmer, Spurk, & Niessen, 2012; Wang & Cheng, 2009; Zhang et al., 2011; Zhang & Bartol, 2010; Zhou & George, 2001). More specifically, about 40% of the empirical articles that we reviewed examined the leadership issue in creativity research.

The relationship between managers and employees is critical for the social context, when working with employees and when developing their skills and knowledge for the purpose of enhancing employees creativity. Since most organizations are structured around teams, the role of leaders has changed from traditional hierarchical directors to



being supportive and noncontrolling. Employees who feel micromanaged soon lose interest in their jobs (Csikszentmihalyi, 2003). Conversely, if leaders are supportive, creative activity is more likely to occur (Shalley & Gilson, 2004). We suggest the use of leadermember exchange (LMX), transformational leadership, and authentic lead-ership for the constructs that can positively influence employee creativity.

LMX theory was originally proposed by Graen and his colleagues and focused on the social exchange processes embedded in the leadersubordinate relationship (Dansereau, Cashman, & Graen, 1973; Dansereau, Graen, & Haga, 1975; Graen, 1976). LMX quality refers to the quality of the interpersonal exchange relationship between an employee and his or her supervisor (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). LMX the-ory conceptualizes the process that is centered on the interactions between leaders and followers. Unique working relationships are formed between leaders and each of their subordinates. These social exchanges can be further described in terms of three stages: (a) initial testing, including evaluations of motives, attitudes, resources, and role expectations; (b) development of mutual trust, loyalty, and respect; and (c) develop-ment of mutual commitment to organizational/unit goals (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995).

Transformational leadership can be defined as a set of behaviors including (a) idealized influence, (b) inspirational motivation, (c) intellectual stimulation, and (d) individualized consideration that can transform followers aspirations, identities, needs, preferences, and values to a higher level (Bass & Avolio, 1994). Transformational leadership is considered for leaders across situations, rather than being thought of as situation-specific such as those behaviors associated with the implementation of a particular change (Herold, Fedor, Caldwell, & Liu, 2008).

Authentic leadership is defined as a process that draws from positive psychological capacities and a positive organizational context, which results in greater self-aware-ness, relational transparency, internalized moral perspectives, and balance processing of information on the part of leaders working with followers, fostering positive self-development (Walumbwa, Avolio, Gardner, Wernsing, & Peterson, 2008).

To describe these four dimensions, similar words are commonly used: honesty, integ-rity, fairness, strengths and weaknesses, sharing, true thoughts, openness, and truthful-ness (Gardner, Avolio, Luthan, May, Walumbwa, 2005; Ilies, Morgeson, & Nahrgang, 2005; Kernis & Goldman, 2005; Luthans & Avolio, 2003). Authentic leaders who are more fair and supportive are likely to enhance the workplace climate for creativity.

Job Context

As Drucker (1988) put it, organizations are shifting to being information-based or self-governing units of knowledge specialists. Knowledge work is characterized by unpre-dictable, multidisciplinary, and non-repetitive tasks with evolving, long term goals which, due to their inherent ambiguity and complexity, require collaborative effort in order to take advantage of multiple viewpoints (Janz, Colquitt, & Noe, 1997, pp. 882-883). Complex jobs demand creative outcomes by encouraging employees to focus simultaneously on multiple dimensions of their work, whereas highly simple or rou-tine jobs may inhibit such a focus (Oldham & Cummings, 1996). In line with goal


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setting theory, when jobs are complex and demanding (i.e., high on challenge, auton-omy, and complexity), individuals are more likely to focus all of their attention and efforts on their jobs, making them more persistent and more likely to consider different alternatives, which should result in creative outcomes (Shalley & Gilson, 2004). For the constructs in the job context, we suggest the use of the job characteristics model, psychological empowerment, and job engagement.

Job design has long been considered to be an important contributor to employees intrinsic motivation, attitudes, and creative performance at work (Amabile, 1988; Hackman & Oldham, 1980; Kanter, 1988; Shalley et al., 2004; West & Farr, 1989). The job characteristics model consists of five factors: variety, identity, significance, autonomy, and feedback (Hackman & Oldham, 1980; Oldham & Cummings, 1996). A meta-analysis of the job design literature concluded that employees working on com-plex jobs are more satisfied and internally motivated than employees working on jobs that are relatively simple (Fried & Ferris, 1987). When jobs are complex and challeng-ing, individuals are likely to be excited about their work activities and interested in completing these activities in the absence of external controls or constraints (Hackman & Oldham, 1980; Oldham & Cummings, 1996).

Several studies examined psychological empowerment as a predictor of employee creativity (e.g., Alge et al., 2006; Gumusluoglu & Ilseb, 2009; Jung et al., 2003; Pieterse et al., 2010; Sun et al., 2012; Zhang & Bartol, 2010). Psychological empower-ment refers to intrinsic task motivation manifested in a set of four cognitive dimen-sions reflecting an individuals orientation to his or her work role: meaning, competence, self-determination, and impact (Spreitzer, 1995). Rather than being ante-cedents or consequences of one another, the four dimensions represent unique facets of the overall construct of empowerment. Since job design can influence psychologi-cal empowerment, we put it in the category of job context. Since psychological empowerment reflects the changing nature of jobs in a knowledge-based economy very well, we expect that the use of psychological empowerment will increase in the future, especially for the study of knowledge workers.

Employee engagement has become the key concern of management and I/O psy-chology scholars because it is one of the most frequently used variables for satisfac-tion, change, creativity, innovation, and performance (Joo & McLean, 2006). Recently, interest on employee engagement has drastically gained popularity in the HRD field (Chalofsky & Krishna, 2009; Macey & Schneider, 2008; Shuck, 2011; Shuck, Reio, & Rocco, 2011; Shuck & Wollard, 2010; Zigarmi, Nimon, Houson, Witt, & Diehl, 2009). A special issue of the journal, Advances in Developing Human Resources, shed light on employee engagement in 2011. In spite of the growing concern for employee engagement, little empirical research about employee engagement can be found in HRD journals with an exception of Shuck et al.s (2011) study. Engaged employees feel fully involved and enthusiastic about their jobs and organizations so they are will-ing and able to contribute to organizational success. According to Kahn (1990), who first conceptualized engagement, it can be defined as harnessing of organization members selves to their work roles; in engagement, people employ and express them-selves physically, cognitively, and emotionally during role performance (p. 693).



Some have pointed out the similarity with job satisfaction and organizational commit-ment, but employee engagement is additionally capturing employees energy or enthu-siasm for work, mental resilience at work, and cognitive involvement in their roles at work (Atwater & Brett, 2006; Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez-roma, & Bakker, 2002). Subsequent to Kahn (1990, 1992), a number of authors have found the relationship between employee engagement and positive organizational outcomes such as organi-zational and financial success (e.g., Harter, Schmidt, & Hayes, 2002; Salanova, Agut, & Peiro, 2005). Despite the intuitive link, little research is done on the relationship between engagement and creativity. More rigorous empirical studies examining the relationship between engagement and creativity are recommended in the future.

In summary, this conceptual framework represents only an attempt to portray the overall relationships among the factors related to employee creativity. One contribu-tion of this model is its integration of useful theory and research from related litera-ture, such as organizational learning, personality, leadership, job design, and employee learning and development. Given the increasing research on employee creativity, this model will hopefully stimulate more empirical creativity research in the field of HRD.

Discussion

Recommendations for future research were proposed in the previous section. In this section, we discuss the implications for creativity research in the field of HRD. We introduce Person-Environment (PE) Fit theory for designing future creativity research. Then we point out the potential methodological issues in creativity research, including measures, sampling, analytical methods as well as the issues of common method biases and cross sectional design. We also briefly discuss the cultural issue.

Theoretical Implications

The contribution of this study to theory lies in the fact that it takes an integrative approach encompassing both personal and contextual factors and explores not only the proximal antecedents but also the distal antecedents introducing new constructs in creativity research. As Lewin (1947) suggested more than 60 years ago, human behav-ior can be explained as a function of the combination or interaction of ones personal-ity and how one perceives his or her environment (Burke, 2002). A majority (70%) of the research on creativity in organizations has simultaneously investigated personal and contextual antecedents of employee creativity for the last 10 years or so, instead of a piecemeal fashion. Thus one of the most significant contributions of this study is that this article proposes a comprehensive framework of research in HRD based on an integrative literature review of the extant empirical research.

Another significance of this study lies in its attempt to find antecedents of employee creativity, including the distal antecedents as well as the proximal antecedents. Previous studies have investigated the relationships between proximal antecedents (e.g., LMX, transformational leadership, coworkers, job complexity) and employee


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creativity in organizations (i.e., Baer, Oldham, & Cummings, 2003; Farmer et al., 2003; Ford & Gioia, 2000; Jaussi & Dionnne, 2003; Shin & Zhou, 2003; Zhou, 2003; Zhou & George, 2001; see Table 2). However, only seven studies have explored distal antecedents such as perceived organizational support or organizational learning cul-ture. We hope that the current study will stimulate more research on organizational culture as a distal antecedent of creativity in the future.

In addition, we suggest to use Person-Environment (PE) fit theory for future cre-ativity research. With its origin in the interactionalist theory, PE fit theory proposes that it needs to match personal characteristics with their corresponding environmental characteristics (Ostroff & Schulte, 2007). PE fit can be defined as the congruence, match, similarity, or correspondence between the person and the environment (Edward & Shipp, 2007, p. 209). The basic premise of PE fit theory is that when char-acteristics of people and the work environment (or contextual factors) are aligned or fit together, positive outcomes for individuals such as satisfaction, commitment, lower turnover intentions, performance, and creativity will be enhanced. Different conceptu-alizations and categorizations of the P and E fit constructs have been offered. On the P side, types of variables that have been considered includes personality-based and per-son-centered attributes such as traits, needs, interests, preferences, values, and percep-tions; knowledge, skills, and abilities; and demographic and background characteristics such as race, gender, and education (e.g., Kristof, 1996). On the E side, the compo-nents of the organizational system such as business culture, strategy, structure, job and work processes, and leadership are the major elements that define the E in PE fit (Ostroff & Schulte, 2007).

The fit or congruence between personal and contextual factors is important in influ-encing the occurrence of creative performance. Most studies on creativity (George & Zhou, 2001; Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Shin & Zhou, 2003; Zhou, 2003; Zhou & George, 2001) have focused on one or more fits among person and environment. We suggest that future creativity research focus on three fits: personorganization (PO) fit, persongroup/social (PG) fit, and personjob (PJ) fit. More specific, for example, cre-ativity researchers can examine the effects of the fit between learning goal orientation and organizational learning culture (PO fit); the fit between proactive personality and transformational leadership (PG fit); the fit between psychological capital and psycho-logical empowerment (PJ fit).

Implications for HRD

While traditional HRD has mainly focused on individual training, HRD has enlarged its territory to individual development and organizational learning and development over time (Joo & McLean, 2006). In addition to training for basic skills of individuals, recently HRD practitioners have paid more attention to employee development pro-grams, such as on-the-job experience, coaching, mentoring, management develop-ment, and career development. We believe that learning and development, job redesign, leadership, and organizational culture that were discussed in this study are all in the domain of HRD. In a broader sense, therefore, creativity in organizations is a critical



agenda for HRD. Despite the significance for organizational success, creativity in organizations is a relatively unexplored topic in the field of HRD. Thus we believe that creativity should be included in the pool of dependent variables of HRD, along with learning, performance, satisfaction, productivity, and effectiveness.

To illustrate the implications of this study to HRD practice, first, job design that promotes an autonomous and challenging job encourages creativity. The role of HRD professionals is to support managers to consider objective job characteristics as they differentiate between jobs. The key is to provide employees with jobs that are chal-lenging enough but not so overstimulating that employees feel overwhelmed and unable to break out of old ways of doing their work (Shalley & Gilson, 2004). In addi-tion, the design needs to align with wider HR systems if it is to be successfully imple-mented or sustained over the longer term (Parker, Wall, & Jackson, 1997).

Supportive leaders can enhance employee creativity. One of the most popular prac-tices in HRD today is coaching that is offered by internal and external HRD profes-sionals. Leadership development is essential in preparing leaders to become coaches. As for the time and resources constraint, managers may coach only those who show high potential for development and advancement and those who are having problems, rather than coaching all employees (McLean, 2006).

Although leadership can play a pivotal role in employee creativity, it is contingent on organizational culture (Watkins & Marsick, 2003). Amabile (1995) suggested that managers and HRD professionals can foster creativity in organizations by eliminating the environmental obstacles (e.g., the turf battles, the caustic reactions to new ideas, the lack of commitment to innovation), creating an environment with an orientation toward innovation and risk taking from the highest levels of top management on down and with open communication and collaboration across the organization. Thus, orga-nizations have an incentive to create environments conducive to high-quality relation-ships by encouraging an organizational culture. Without such a culture, the efforts invested in learning and development for both the individual and group are suboptimized.

HRD professionals can support managers by providing relevant practices and ser-vices. However, changing one factor alone (e.g., having supportive supervisors) will not help creativity, if other factors are not in place (e.g., a supportive organizational culture). For example, there might be no point in investing great effort in recruiting and developing creative individuals if the environment does not allow, encourage, or support these behaviors. Therefore, each HRD practice should be delivered and applied in a concerted way with a holistic perspective. That is, enhancing creativity of employees will require an integrated strategy, incorporating elements of culture man-agement, leadership development, training/learning, and job design. By adopting an integrated strategy to improve the creativity of their employees, managers and HRD professionals can help their employees win the race of sustained competitive advan-tage. This is by no means an easy feat, which is why organizations that are successful in building this type of organization are likely to have a sustainable competitive advantage.


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Potential Issues of Creativity Research

In this section, we discuss the potential methodological issues in empirical creativity research, including the issues of common method biases and cross-sectional design as well as the issues of measures and analytical techniques. We also briefly discuss the cultural issue in creativity research.

First, most empirical research confines itself to a cross-sectional survey method that leaves room for speculation with regard to causality among the variables. Longitudinal research that would substantiate the conclusions is recommended. More specifically, there should be more longitudinal studies with comparison groups, so that causality can be fully established.

Second, relying on self-reported surveys, a number of creativity studies have a pos-sible common method bias. Because of the perceptual nature of the data, there is the possibility of a percept-percept bias. However, this type of bias does not threaten the relationship among the antecedents and employee creativity, when the supervisors assess the outcome variable. To solve the limitations above, methodologically, research needs to be based on objective indicators and multiple sources. As Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, and Podsakoff (2003) suggested, there could be a couple of statisti-cal remedies. One is the Harmons one-factor test that is used to test the common method variance issues among the collected data through a factor analysis. The other analysis is the single-common-method-factor approach, which is designed to partition the responses variance to a focal measure into three categories: trait, method, and random error components.

Third, with regard to the measure, George and Zhous (2001) 13-item scale is one of the most widely used measures for employee creativity. In addition to employee self-responses, supervisors who are familiar with the employees work behavior need to be asked to indicate the creative behaviors of the employee they are rating. What makes it more difficult is that the matched ratio of dyadic data could be as low as 20%. To eliminate single-source bias and to increase validity, however, having supervisors rate the creativity of their employees is most commonly used in field studies (George & Zhou, 2001; Oldham & Cummings, 1996; Scott & Bruce, 1994; Shin & Zhou, 2003; Tierney et al., 1999; Zhou, 2003; Zhou & George, 2001).

Fourth, creativity may be stimulated or hindered by cultural values, such as world-view and the value placed on conformity or tradition (Lubart, 1999). Creativity theo-ries and models have been developed primarily in Western cultures. According to Lubart, The Western definition of creativity as a product-oriented, originality-based phenomenon can be compared with an Eastern view of creativity as a phenomenon of expressing an inner truth in a new way or of self-growth (1999, p. 347). More research in international and cross-cultural context is needed in the future.

Fifth, in line with the above, there may be limitations in the components of the instrument, as most measures used in a creativity study are developed in Western con-text. Those measures may contain culturally sensitive items that may not be detected in spite of the efforts to validate them in a specific cultural setting. According to



Hofstede (1980), East Asian countries such as Japan and Korea are known for their collectivistic culture with strong power distance and high uncertainty avoidance. For example, Korean employees are likely to have a less proactive personality than those in the Western culture, because proactive personality has to do with risk-taking and initiative (Bateman & Crant, 1993; Crant, 2000). To increase generalizability, more studies in various culture and industries representing diverse demographic groups are needed.

Last but not least, future research that includes group levels of analysis is needed to understand more fully the role of teammember interactions and group process on empowerment and outcomes. A groups creative behavior is influenced by cohesive group characteristics that support open interactions, diverse viewpoints, and playful surroundings (Amabile, 1998) and, perhaps, the individual creative behavior and per-formance of its members. Particularly, this is needed for the organizations in a collec-tivistic culture.

Conclusion

In this turbulent, knowledge-based economy, creativity has become one of the most important sources of sustained competitive advantage for organizations as well as for individuals. Substantial evidence suggests that employee creativity makes an important contribution to organizational innovation, competitiveness, and survival. We briefly dis-cussed the history and transition of creativity research. Based on the review of the extant empirical studies published since 2001, this article proposes an integrative conceptual framework. The main purpose of this study was to stimulate creativity research in the field of HRD. Learning and development, job redesign, leadership, and organizational culture that we discussed in this study are all in the domain of HRD. In a broader sense, therefore, creativity in organizations is a critical agenda for HRD. Finally, we hope that this study will stimulate not only a more integrative approach to empirical research on creativity but also more international and cross-cultural studies in the future.

Authors Note

This article is the authors original work, which has not been published elsewhere and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere at the time it is submitted.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The third author was supported by the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC Projects. 70725005, 70890081 and 71172009).


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