Work environments for employee productivity and creativity1

Jan Dul Department of Management of Technology and Innovation, RSM Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands jdul@rsm.nl Canan Ceylan Department of Business Administration,Uludag University, Bursa, Turkey ccanan@uludag.edu.tr

Abstract Innovative organizations need creative people who generate novel and useful ideas for products, services, systems, processes, work methods, etc. Creativity in organizations depends on the personal characteristics of the employees as well as the employees organizational and physical environment. This paper presents a conceptual model of the effect of personal, organizational and physical factors on a workers creativity, based on literature data. The model suggests that creativity can be enhanced not only by selection and training of potentially creative workers (e.g. people with broad interest, tolerance of ambiguity, divergent thinking, domain knowledge, intrinsic motivation), but also by designing an organizational environment that stimulates intrinsic motivation (e.g. demanding jobs, autonomy, supportive management style), and designing a physical environment that stimulates positive moods (e.g. presence of plants, windows, calming and stimulating colors, no distracting noise). Suggestions are given for future (ergonomics) research to test the model. Keywords: creativity, innovation, workplace design, organizational design, theory, literature review

Introduction Since the industrial revolution, organizations focus on productivity: maximization of output at minimum cost. To support this objective, management principles and instruments have been developed and used in manufacturing and services companies all over the world. As a result, labour has been divided into small specialized tasks, processes have been standardized and subsequently mechanized and automated, and workers are specialized to do remaining tasks, many times resulting in repetitive and monotonic work with standard workplaces. The managers role is to control
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This paper is based on Dul, J. and Ceylan, C. (2006). Enhancing organizational creativity from an ergonomics perspective: The Creativity Development model. In: Proceedings of the 16th world congress on ergonomics, 10-14 July, Maastricht, The Netherlands.

whether the worker performs the task according to a predetermined plan, and the workers payment is partly based on realizing predicted output. However, in a knowledge based and innovation driven competitive business environment, such a work organization may not be sufficient or even the right choice. A company that needs to compete on innovation needs its organizational members not only for reaching productivity goals, but also for developing novel and useful ideas for solving problems and developing new products, services, processes, systems, work methods, etc. Hence, an organization needs to stimulate the creative potential of its workforce; work environments need to be designed to support worker creativity. Hence, organizations need workers that can produce novel and useful ideas. Creativity has become a fundamental resource for organizations to obtain or maintain a competitive advantage. Organizations that pay attention to worker creativity normally focus on the worker, not on the work environment. These organizations select creative workers, and provide creativity training. However, generating creativity by selection and training of the creative workers may not be sufficient. Creative workers that are placed in traditional productivity driven work environments may not show the desired creative behaviour. Organizational work environments that are designed for productivity, having formal management structures, time constraints, strict regulations, daily similar tasks, etc., may even obstruct or inhibit worker creativity. Also physical work environments that are designed for productivity, e.g. having standardised workplaces, may not support creativity. So the question is how work environments that foster creativity must be designed. This question is particularly of interest to the ergonomics field which goal is to design physical and organizational environments for human wellbeing and overall system performance. Work environments that foster creativity will also advance the workers well-being in terms of job satisfaction and lower intentions to leave (Shalley et al. 2000). In this paper we develop, based on a literature review, we identify factors that influence employee creativity and we develop a conceptual model about the relationship between work environment and creativity. The model suggests how worker creativity could be supported by a proper design of organizational and physical work environments.

Factors influencing employee creativity Personal characteristics A large body of knowledge has been developed during the last 50 years on the relationship between personal characteristics and creativity. Most of the research can be found in the psychological domain. Summaries of this research show that, for example, personality (e.g. openness, broad interest, toleration of ambiguity), cognitive style (e.g. divergent thinking, problem solving), knowledge (e.g. domain knowledge, broad knowledge), and intrinsic motivation (task motivation) are positively related to worker creativity e.g. Amabile et al. 1996, Oldham and Cummings 1996, Mumford 2000, Shalley et al. 2004.)

Organizational environment Only recently, the literature acknowledges the importance of the organizational context to support creative workers. Two leading models that emphasize this are Amabiles componential theory model (Amabile 1988, 1997) and Woodman s interactionist model (Woodman and Schoenfeldt 1990, Woodman et al.1993). These models state that a supportive social and organizational environment can enhance a workers creativity. Empirical evidence, as reviewed by Shalley et al. (2004) and Shalley and Gilson (2004) suggests that factors at organizational level (e.g. organizational climate, HRM practices), at team level (e.g. social context, group composition) and at job level (e.g. complex and demanding jobs, autonomy, goal setting, sufficient resources, rewards, supervisory support, external evaluation of work) all influence creativity. Physical environment Both Amabiles and Woodmans model, and Shalleys reviews concentrate on the potential of the organizational work environment to foster creativity. These authors also suggest that the physical work environment may enhance creativity, as other authors do. For example, Amabile et al. (1996, p249) state physical environments that are engineered to be cognitively and perceptually stimulating can enhance creativity. Woodman et al. (1993, p296) mention the physical environment as a contextual influence as well, and Shalley and Gilson (2004, p48) suggest that future research should address the effect of the physical layout of the workspace on creative performance. However, these models and reviews do not provide specific details how the physical work environment could enhance creativity. Specific physical environment factors The specific design of the physical work environment traditionally has received much attention in the field of ergonomics. However, such attention focused on human performance, health and well-being, without paying attention to human creativity. In order to fill this gap, we have reviewed empirical studies on the relationship between characteristics of the physical environment factors (e.g. the presence of plants, windows, light, and noise) and creativity. We looked for three types of studies: (1) studies on the effect of physical characteristics of the environment on performance on a creative task, (2) studies on the effect of physical characteristics of the environment on mood, and (3) studies on the effect of physical characteristics of the environment both on mood and performance on a creative task. Although there has been debate whether a persons mood may affect creativity (e.g. Mumford 2003, Kaufmann 2003, Shalley et al. 2004), recent evidence shows that positive mood may foster creativity (Amabile et al. 2005). Hence, we looked in the environmental psychology, ergonomics, and architecture/indoor design and other literature for physical factors in the work environment that have an effect on positive mood. The results of this review showed that there is some empirical evidence that physical environment factors impact creativity directly, or indirectly via mood. The presence of plants in the workplace seems to have a positive effect on the occupants mood and creative task performance. Shibata and

Suzuki (2002, 2004) found that creative task performance enhanced when plants were in the room, and Larsen et al. (1998) showed that the presence of indoor plants made peoples mood more positive. When engaged in a creative task, plants may work as a source of inspiration or information (Shibata and Suzuki 2002). Window view can have a positive effect on occupants mood. Boubekri et al. (Boubekri et al.1991) found that the amount of sunlight penetration had a positive impact on the feelings of relaxation, and Stone and Irvine (1991) found that a windowed room resulted in more positive perceptions for a creative task. However, Stone (1998) found no effect of windows on creative task performance. Color can have an effect on a persons positive and negative mood. Stone and English (1998) and Stone (2003) found effects of color on positive mood. It appears that blue is a calming color and red is a stimulating color. But the color in the work environment may also result in negative moods. Kwallek and Lewis (1990) found that a red office was perceived more distracting than a white office, and in a red office, more anxiety was felt than in a blue-green office (Kwallek et al. 1997). On the other hand, Stone (2003) demonstrated that negative mood was not affected by office color, and Kwallek et al. (1996) Found different negative mood reactions for males and females. Three aspects of lighting in the workplace may be important for creativity: the quantity of light (illumination level), the quality of light (color temperature) and the ability to have control over the quantity of light. Knez (1995) showed that the effect of the quantity of light on mood and creative task performance depends on the color temperature of the light. If the (white) light is warm, a higher level of iluminance will result in more positive mood and better creative task performance. On the other hand, if the light is cool, a higher level of illuminance will result in lower positive mood and performance. It seems that the quality of light (in terms of color temperature), in general, has no direct effect on positive or negative mood (Boray et al. 1989, Veitch 1997, Knez 2001). However, Knez (1995) found that males and females react differently to color temperature of the light. In warm color light negative mood increased in males and decreased in females; whereas in cool color light negative mood decreased in males and increased in females. Color of light may communicate different affective loadings to males and females (Knez and Enmarker 1998). Knez (2001) demonstrated that people perform better on a creative task in an environment with warm color light than in an environment with cool color light or artificial daylight, although an earlier study (1995) suggests that only females perform better on a creative task in warm color light than in cool color light, whereas the opposite was true for males. The ability to control the lighting seems not to cause a more positive mood (Boyce et al (2000). Veitch and Gifford (1996) even found that choice over lighting decreased creative task performance: a creative task was performed more poorly and slowly than when no choice over lighting was given. Noise in the work place can have an impact on both positive mood and negative mood. Noise can be perceived as an environmental distracter or

stressor and can have a negative impact on perceptions of support for creativity at work (Soriano de Alencar and Bruno-Faria 1997, Stokols et al. 2002). On the positive side Oldham et al. (1995) demonstrated that the use personal-stereo headset improves mood states (more relaxation). Conceptual model Based on the literature review we have formulated the Creativity Development model (CD-model) as shown in Fig. 1.

Organizational Environment
(e.g. job design, management style)

Individual
(e.g. personality, cognitive style, knowledge, intrinsic motivation)

Creativity

Novel and useful ideas

for products, services, work methods, etc.

Physical Environment
(e.g. windows, plants, light, color, noise)

Fig. 1. The Creativity Development model (CD model) about the relationship between individual, organizational and physical factors influencing creativity. The CD model is a conceptual model on the relationship between individual factors, the organizational work environment, and the physical work environment and worker creativity. The central part of the model is workers creativity. Creativity is generally defined as the production of novel and useful ideas (Plucker et al. 2004). The individual production process of novel and useful ideas can be considered as a series of steps that an individual must take (Lubart 2000-2001, Mumford et al. 2002, Reiter-Palmon and Illies 2004). For example, an old and still useful step-model was developed by Wallas (1926), see also recent interpretations by Schweizer (2005) and Haner (2005), which consists of the following steps: (1) Preparation: when the person directs his attention to a particular topic and gathers information within himself and the environment, (2) Incubation: when conscious work stops, and attention is directed to other things, while unconsciously the creative process continues, (3) Illumination: the moment when new inside suddenly comes to
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mind, and (4) Verification: when logical and rational thought comes in again to turn the new inside into something apparent to others. The output of creativity process is an idea that is considered by others as novel and useful. In an organizational setting, this novel and useful idea can be related to products, services, processes, systems, work methods, etc. Only after adoption of the novel and useful idea in the organization, innovation starts. Individual characteristics as mentioned above greatly influence a workers creative behavior. The model shows a selection of possible individual characteristics that are considered to be important by many researchers: personality, cognitive style, knowledge, and intrinsic motivation. Organizations could develop creativity by selecting individuals that are potentially creative, for instance based on assessment tools like Goughs Creative Personality Scale (Oldham and Cummings 1996), or by training workers in cognitive skills like divergent thinking (Scott et al. 2004). The organizational work environment can support a workers creative behavior. According to Amabiles model (Amabile 1996), organizational factors can influence a workers intrinsic motivation to be creative. In giving practical advise, Shalley and Gilson (Shalley and Gilson 2004, p47) state that because research has indicated that those factors that are more proximal to an individuals day to day work [] may have a stronger effect than factors more distal or at the organizational level [], it may be best to focus on joblevel factors first because they may have the most immediate and critical effect on employee creativity. Some of these proximal factors are shown in the CD model, such as demanding jobs, autonomy and supportive (rather than command and control) management styles. The physical work environment can support workers creativity as well, as shown above. Our review showed that several elements in the physical environment influences a persons mood, and in our model we presume, similarly to Amabile et al. (2005), that a positive mood is supportive for creativity. The model shows some physical elements in the work environment that may support creativity: plants, windows, color, light, noise. Future research The Creativity Development model that we propose is only one representation of reality. In comparison to other models we particularly emphasize the role of the physical environment to support creativity. In future research the model needs empirically testing and further development. Tests of the model could be conducted by exploring several different parts of the model in different groups of workers, for different tasks, using different research strategies including experiments, surveys and explanatory case studies. For example, in a recent study (Ceylan et al. 2006) we tested the relationship between the physical office environment and creativity of managers and found that offices have more creativity potential if plants, windows, and cool colors are present, and if they are brightly lit. The ultimate test of the model is a test of one of its basic ideas: namely that a creative work environment, foster and organizations innovativeness and performance, and stimulates worker satisfaction. We hope that our model can contribute to this goal.

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