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Ideas for Leaders #505
How Political Correctness IncreasesCreativity in Mixed-Sex Teams
Key Concept
Creativity can suffer in mixed-sex teams. Men andwomen both experience uncertainty when asked togenerate ideas as members of a mixed-sex workgroup: men because they may fear offending thewomen and women because they fear having theirideas devalued or rejected. Being PC helps men andwomen become more creative.
Idea Summary
Conventional wisdom has it that diversity helpscreativity, in that people in homogenous groups aresimilar to one another with similar ideas and thereforeless divergent thinking occurs. Also most research intogroup creativity assumes that creativity is unleashedby removing conventional constraints.
This research, from Professor Jennifer Chatman of theUC Berkeley Haas School of Business: Management ofOrganizations Group and her co-authors,demonstrates that politically correct behaviouralnorms, may play an important role in promotinggender parity at work by allowing diverse work groupsto more freely exchange creative ideas.
This is counterintuitive, both because politicalcorrectness (PC) is associated with conformity ratherthan the free-thinking needed for creativity, andbecause the well-meaning concept of PC has in recentyears become degraded and the butt of a thousandjokes. However, according to the researchers PCnorms promote rather than suppresses the freeexpression of ideas by reducing the uncertaintyexperienced by both sexes in mixed-sex teams andsignalling that the group is predictable enough to risksharing your ideas with.
“Our contention is controversial because many haveargued that imposing the PC norm might not justeliminate offensive behaviour and language but willalso cause people to filter out and withhold potentiallyvaluable ideas and perspectives,” says Chatman, “Wesuggest that this critical view of the PC norm reflects a
ShareAuthors
Goncalo, Jack A.Jennifer A.Michelle M.Jessica A.
Institutions
Cornell UniversityUniversity of California Berkeley HaasSchool of BusinessWashington University Olin BusinessSchoolVanderbilt University
Source
Administrative Science Quarterly
Idea conceived
April 2015
Idea posted
April 2015
DOI number
Subject
DiversityCommunicationCorporate CultureInterpersonal SkillsTeam Building and TeamworkWomen LeadersEmotional IntelligenceOrganizational Behaviour
4/21/2015 How Political Correctness Increases Creativity in MixedSex Teams | Ideas for Leaders
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suggest that this critical view of the PC norm reflects adeeply rooted theoretical assumption that normativeconstraints inevitably stifle creative expression—anassumption we challenge.”
The authors designed their experiments taking intoaccount the different incentives men and women havefor adhering to politically correct behaviour. Men saidthey were motivated to adhere to a PC norm becauseof concerns about not being overbearing andoffending women. Whereas one might expect womento perceive a PC norm as emblematic of weakness orconformity, women in the experiment became moreconfident about expressing their ideas out loud whenthe PC norm was salient or prominent. In contrast, inwork groups that were homogeneous – all men or allwomen – a salient PC norm had no impact on thegroup’s creativity compared to the control group.
Study participants were randomly divided into mixedsex groups and same sex groups. Next, researchersasked the groups to describe the value of PCbehaviour before being instructed to work together ona creative task. The control groups were not exposedto the PC norm before beginning their creative task.The task involved brainstorming ideas on a newbusiness entity to be housed in a property left vacatedby a mismanaged restaurant – by design, a projectthat has no right or wrong strategy.
Instead of stifling their ideas, mixed-sex groupsexposed to the PC norm performed more creatively bygenerating a significantly higher number of divergentand novel ideas than the control group. As expected,same sex groups generated fewer creative outcomes.
Business Application
Actively imposing a PC standard sets clearexpectations of how women and men should interactwith each other in a work environment.Counterintuitively this in turn encourages greatersharing of creative ideas in mixed-sex teams and workgroups by reducing uncertainty in relationships.
Creativity in mixed-sex groups emerges, not byremoving behavioural constraints, but by imposingthem. Setting a norm that both clarifies expectationsfor appropriate behaviour and makes salient the socialsanctions that result from using sexist languageunleashes creative expression by countering theuncertainty that arises in mixed-sex work groups.
Managers should position PC behaviour part of theirorganizational culture. That way when creativethinking and idea sharing are needed it is already inplace to provide a layer of safety which can helppromote a creativity and innovation.
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License Notice
This content is provided free-to-accessfor your own personal research,development and private study.
A license must be acquired for use byorganizations, for employee developmentor as a learning resource. To purchase alicense and learn about other partnerbenefits contact us.
Standard terms and conditions apply.
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© Copyright IEDP Ideas for Leaders 2015
About Legal Help Follow
References
Creativity from Constraint? How the PoliticalCorrectness Norm Influences Creativity in Mixed-sex Work Groups. Jack A. Goncalo, Jennifer A.Chatman, Michelle M. Duguid, & Jessica A.Kennedy. Administrative Science Quarterly(December 2014).
Further Reading and Relevant Resources
Jack A. Goncalo’ profile at Cornell University
Jennifer A. Chatman’s profile at the University of CaliforniaBerkeley Haas School of Business
Jennifer A. Chatman's personal website
Michelle M. Duguid’s profile at the Washington University OlinSchool of Business,
Jessica A. Kennedy’s profile at Vanderbilt University
UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education's profile at IEDP
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