Taking personal initiative and communicating about ideas: What is important for the creative process and for idea creativity?

By Carmen Binnewies, Sandra Ohly, Sabine Sonnentag. 2007

203 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using multisource data, this study focused on the process aspect of creativity at work. A modification of Amabile's (1988) stage model of the creative process with the stages of problem identification, preparation, idea generation, and idea validation served as the basis for our study. We examined personal initiative and idea-related communication as two important factors for the creative process and for the degree of creativity of one specific idea an employee recently produced at work. In a sample of 52 nurses, we found that idea-related communication was positively related to engagement in the creative process but not to idea creativity. Personal initiative boosted engagement in the beginning of the creative process and was positively related to creativity as an outcome. Results suggest that idea-related communication is important for showing engagement in the creative process, whereas personal initiative is important in the beginning of the creative process and for idea creativity.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/82ca2ac8ef8740d538e85040db1aca5ab14984eb

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In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Age and creativity at work The interplay between job resources, age and idea creativity (2008, background): “) that may encourage employees to propose and discuss new ideas ( Binnewies et al. , in press”
On the relationship between emotional intelligence and entrepreneurial attitudes and intentions (2009, background): “Additionally, Binnewies et al. (2007) suggest that personal initiative (a construct related to proactivity) is important in the beginning of the creative process and for idea creativity.”
Inclusive Leadership and Employee Involvement in Creative Tasks in the Workplace: The Mediating Role of Psychological Safety (2010, unknown): “Binnewies, Ohly, and Sonnetag ( 2007 ) found that initiative and idea related communication increased employee creative engagement.”
Effect of authentic leadership on employee creativity in project-based organizations with the mediating roles of work engagement and psychological empowerment (2018, background): “Binnewies, Ohly, and Sonnentag(2007) reported that individual inventiveness is absolutely related to idea creativity.”
Measuring employee innovation:a review of existing scales and the development of the innovative behavior and innovation support inventories across cultures (2017, background): “Thus, an important aspect of innovative behavior is to communicate the idea to colleagues and managers to receive their feedback (Binnewies et al., 2007).”
A Critical Analysis of the Workplace Creativity Criterion Space (2012, methodology): “To demonstrate construct validity, each indicator of each behavior would map onto its specific latent construct, and these latent constructs would then form the higher order latent construct of CPBs (e.g., Binnewies et al., 2007; Zhang & Bartol, 2010a, 2010b).”