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A Multi-disciplinary Perspective on Decision-making and Creativity:

Wayne Smith, Ph.D.Department of Management

CSU Northridge

Using the Diversity of Truth-seeking and Sense-making to Advantage in Organizational Contexts

Updated: Wednesday, April 19, 2023

11 – Creativity (Runco Book)

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Creativity (Runco Book)

• Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (1983)– Verbal symbolic– Spatial– Interpersonal– Bodily-kinesthetic– Mathematical– Intrapersonal– Musical

• Can you identify one or more of these in the job descriptions, performance evaluations, and promotion criteria within an organization?

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Creativity (Runco Book)

• Is “creativity” the wrong word to use in an organizational context?– Remember, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” (Drucker)

• If attitude -> perspective -> behavior -> performance…• Then perhaps conscientiousness -> creativity -> impact -> value

• Again, can you identify a pattern and practice of creativity principles and culture that leads to success within an organization?

– Runco suggests just the language and cultural barriers alone are enough to stifle effective creativity

– He offers the terms “enhancement” or “fulfillment of potential” instead

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Creativity (Runco Book)

• Ekvall and Ryhammar (1999) find that creative outcomes are most likely if the organization does the following (organizational-level measurement)– Challenges individuals with tasks that are meaningful.– Employees have opportunities and initiative.– There must be support (encouragement and reward) for new ideas.– Employees must be trusted and feel that trust (viscerally).– There is a permissive environment with frequent discussion and

debate, but no animosity.– Risk-taking is supported; experiments are tolerated. Most important,

risk is viewed as a part of the creative process.

• In other words, what is the true and palpable “creative climate” of an organization?

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Creativity (Runco Book)

• Ekvall and Ryhammar (1999) suggest the following attributes be measured at the organizational-level (a “creativity audit”)– Support for ideas– Challenge– Time for ideas– Freedom– Trust and openness– Dynamism/liveliness– Risk-taking– Playfulness and humor– Debates– Conflicts and impediments

• Could you write one or more survey questions that would elicit reliable and valid responses from an organization’s various constituencies?

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Creativity (Runco Book)

• Jones Inventory of Barriers to Effective Problem-Solving (individual-level measurement)– Need to identify “barriers” and “absence of barriers”

• Four Key Dimensions (for example, on a Survey)– Strategy Questions

• E.g., “I like to keep strictly to time schedules.” v. “I am easygoing about time-keeping”– Values Questions

• E.g., “Rigid moral standards are unreasonable” v. “Modern moral standards are too slack”

– Perceptual Questions• E.g., “I never forget a face” v. “I have a poor memory for faces”

– Self-Image Questions• E.g., “I try to avoid competition” v. “I like to win”

• See also (Torrance Tests)--http://www.ststesting.com/ngifted.html

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Creativity (Runco Book)

• Strategies for Creative Problem-solving (Logstin, 1993)• Taking a fresh look at interactions• Restating the Problem• Visualizing fruitful analogies• Searching for useful order of magnitude changes• Staying alert to happy serendipity, and• Breaking your problem apart and putting it back together

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Creativity (Runco Book)

• The Correlates of Creativity• Intelligence• Imagination• Originality• Innovation• Invention• Discovery• Serendipity• Intentions• Adaptability

• Flexibility• Evolution

• (you knew this was coming) Does your organization craft/cultivate, promote/fund, and measure/manage one or more of these attributes?

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Creativity (Runco Book)

• One last word (Wayne speaking here)

• I think you need multiple methods to evaluate creativity at either the individual-level or the organizational-level– Survey– History– First-person observation– Artifact analysis (e.g., documents and communications)– Quantitative analysis (e.g., financial performance)– Qualitative analysis (e.g., interviews)– Perception by external constituencies (e.g., customers and suppliers)

– (and perhaps more…Management study is hard work!)

Sources

• Runco, M. (2007), Creativity, Elsevier.

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