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This article investigates how leaders in industrial and academic conditions encourage research group members to create new ways of doing things. The researchers have analyzed various critical incidents by using a modified version of the critical incident technique. The main purpose of this study is to examine how group leaders in academic and industrial research settings stimulate creativity in group members.
This article investigates how leaders in industrial and academic conditions encourage research group members to create new ways of doing things. The researchers have analyzed various critical incidents by using a modified version of the critical incident technique. The main purpose of this study is to examine how group leaders in academic and industrial research settings stimulate creativity in group members.
This article investigates how leaders in industrial and academic conditions encourage research group members to create new ways of doing things. The researchers have analyzed various critical incidents by using a modified version of the critical incident technique. The main purpose of this study is to examine how group leaders in academic and industrial research settings stimulate creativity in group members.
Background and Purpose The article A Critical Incident Study of Leaders Inuence on Creativity in Research Groups written by Sven Hemlin and Lisa Olsson basically investigates howleaders in industrial and academic conditions encourage research group members to create new ways of doing things. In this study, the researchers have analyzed various critical incidents by using a modied version of the critical incident technique so as to collect plausible, reliable and validated results.This article states that leadership is significant as it assists leaders as well as followers to accomplish tasks through the new innovation. Here, each and every incident is coded and categorized for identifying which category deals with which situation in industrial and academic setting. The main purpose of this study is to examine how group leaders in academic and industrial research settings stimulate creativity in group members by using different techniques and situations. This study also gives significance on coding and categorization which not only helps to reduce the big issues into the smallest one but also helps to bring the meaningful conclusions. Main Issues In what way do the research group leaders influence and stimulate creativity in the group? How research group members perceive their leaders to stimulate the creativity level of the group? Do differences in academic institutions and industry explain the differences in how research group leaders stimulate group creativity? What is the reason for the importance of creative incident? What is the reason for difference in the leadership approach to creativity in universities and industries? The above-mentioned issues are importance because creativity plays a key role in todays world. Amabile & Khaire (2008) highlight the importance of creativity by stating that as competition turns into a game of who can generate the best and greatest number of ideas, creativity plays a pivotal role. The leader plays a guiding role in research groups. He/she provides the expertise, ensures co-ordination assigns tasks and supports the group. Thus it is crucial to better understand the relationship between leadership and creativity. Basic arguments made by Author Previous studies have failed to study leadership as a driver of creativity, so the reason for conducting this study is to shed more light on a little know area of leadership and creativity Another reason for conducting the study is that very few evidence exist on the topic in the area of R&D, this study has been conducted in the field of biomedicine and biotechnology. So the reason for conducting this study is to explore the relationship between leadership and creativity in the R&D field
2 Group-9: 13309, 13322, 13336 Methodology In this article, leader related incidents of creativity were gathered by applying critical incident technique. In this study, they basically asked research group members of academy and industry to memorize the recent events they faced when their leader tried to simulate their creativity. After this when they memorized their current events and incident, they again prepared and asked three questions to answer in an organized manner. And the questions were as follows: describe about the situation which was causing to occur an incident? Did this incident/event help you to implement new ideas and concept in your work if yes, why or why not? Describe the things that your group leader did to instigate your way of doing things in your work? They conducted this interview session three times with the research groups but not for those who were in the situation of not memorizing the more incidents. There was the involvement of the both of the authors in initial sessions but in the latter sessions only the second author was involved to perform the tasks by applying tape recorder and completed both tasks. Here, after the completion of each question and answer session, they have included the plausible and reliable information in their research. Participants In this article, either industrial or academic research groups had participated to collect the reliable and validated information. Here, these groups have been identified by searching a Swedish biomedical and biotechnical network site and university web pages. To recruit and select these groups, they had developed criteria such as they should have research knowledge and background with two members and a leader. When they identified these groups, the group leader was asked to request these group members to get involved in the research where the women and men of different nationalities were encouraged to participate. They specifically asked the leaders to invite men and women of various nationalities. In this study, various subordinates with varied knowledge and experiences were encouraged by their industrial leaders to participate and also the academic leaders were requested to instigate their subordinates at various level of academic seniority. In this study, total of 93 participants had participated out of which 18 participants were in a situation of not memorizing the past incidents. Thus, in the final sample, they included total of 75 participants from 34 organizations (33 from industry and 42 from universities). Out of those participants, the participants having doctoral degrees were 54.7% (university: 47.62%; industry: 63.6%), and 45.3% of the university participants were doctoral students. The industrial members basically were from engineering background not doctoral students. In small or starts-up companies which were located nearby Universities having less than 10 employees, a total of 19 industry participants worked for, a total of 11 industry participants worked for companies having about 10100 employees and 3 industry participants worked for a larger company having 110 employees. The university participants who were involved in this study were doctoral students, post-doctoral students, and laboratory assistants. There was no gender discrimination in this study as they were having almost equal as such (50.7% males, 49.3% females), but in the university group the percentage of women was higher (i.e. 64.3%) and in the industry groups the percentage of men was higher (i.e. 69.7%). In case of group leaders, 85.3% were having doctoral degrees and the male leaders were 68.0%. The participants had to come in a group ranging from 2-13 (M = 5.7, SD = 3.2). The participants from university groups were both larger in number (M = 6.3, SD = 3.2) and older (M = 7.7, SD = 5.0) than the industry groups (M = 3.5, SD = 2.4, t (73) = -2.07, p = 0.042 and M = 4.8, SD = 3.0, t (61.5) = -4.66, p = 0.001). 3 Group-9: 13309, 13322, 13336 Data Analysis Here, the content analysis was used to identify the categories from the members in five steps. Firstly, they developed a matrix which had separate column for each of our three questions to report description of information. Then, the incidents which were relevant to the situations were involved and the creativity instigating behaviors of the leader were also included. Secondly, the incidents as per meaning content under tentative category labels were managed and organized for particular situations. Also in this process, researchers did coding and categorization of the issues, discussed about issues, and checked each other of coding and categorization during the work process. Thirdly, they made a decision about which categories to discard and which to select. Fourthly, they integrated various categorizes in a meaningful way. Finally in the fifth step, they conducted reliability test to assure that whether our codings and that of a third (independent) person agreed. Here, Landis and Kochs (1977) classification the agreement was fair for the reasons (k = 0.33), moderate for the situations (k = 0.52), substantial for the behaviors (k = 0.62). Also, a total of 153 critical incidents were analyzed by the researchers out of which 62% (N = 95) were reported by university participants and 38% (N = 58) were reported by industry participants. The incidents reported by industry participants (M = 1.39, SD = 0.97, t (91) = -2.00, p = 0.049) were less than the done by University participants (M = 1.85, SD = 1.18). Moreover, in this research, the researchers had calculated binomial p to test whether there is any difference in the observed number of incidents in the university or industry settings than what was expected (p < 0.05). Also in this study, in order to categorize the occurrence of the critical incidents the six situations such as Research meetings; Supervisor/Expert advice; Professional challenge; Travelling and new collaborations; Social issues; and Creativity-stimulating techniques had been used as shown in the table 1 in article where more than 50 percentage of the reported situation was occupied by research meeting and supervisor/expert advice. While doing the reporting, two situations like travelling and new collaborations (p = 0.022) and Supervision/Expert advice (p = 0.046) were reported by university participants. Supervision/Expert advice situations were developed to handle the issues like how to improve methods and scientific communication and how to accomplish the tasks. For example, while doing research it was found that the leader had instigated one of his subordinate to do the things in a new way which he found correct than what he was previously doing due to which the respondent was satisfied with the way instructed by his leader. Professional challenge situations were developed to solve the problems related to new responsibilities while doing the research or handle the tough situation related to teaching and supervision in the universities. In the same way, research meeting situations were created for research discussions on current projects, project planning in groups and, at the universities only. In research meeting also the various activities like strategic decision making at the universities could be conducted. Similarly, travelling and collaborations situations were created to attend conferences, make new contacts and have collaboration with visiting researcher groups. Social issues were used to develop collaborative group research climate by discarding negative climates for group research in industries and universities. Finally the Creativity-stimulating techniques were organized to invite, encourage and welcome industrial designer to make sketching exercises.
4 Group-9: 13309, 13322, 13336 Findings: 1. To lead people successfully, expertise and support must be provided to individuals and groups. Such providing of expertise and support is found to be most significant leadership behavior. 2. There exist no significant differences between creative stimulating leader behavior of university leader and industry leader. 3. It was also found that rewards like gifts, praise and expression of trust motivates follower's creativity. 4. Although no any significant difference was found between task behavior and relation behavior, task behavior did occurred more than researchers' assumptions. 5. The creativity stimulating leadership behavior was directed at individuals among university group members and the same was directed at groups among industry group members. 6. It was also found that a leader initiated get together most likely releases the creativity in groups compared to imaginative hunches and spontaneous discussions which are insufficient to flourish creative process. Main Idea The main idea of this article is to examine how group leaders in academic and industrial research settings stimulate creativity in group members. Here, it basically specifies that expertise plays a significance role to lead the group successfully. It also states that there is no difference in the creativity stimulating behavior between industrial and academic leaders as the same creativity stimulating leadership behaviors were recommended for both university and industrial group members. The leader should focus on planning and get together rather than making spontaneous discussions which is likely to produce creativity in group by providing rewards like gifts, praise and expression. Managerial Implications and Research Implications Managers can use leadership style to stimulate creativity of their followers in most of the organization as well as in research as it helps in managing and accomplishing goals by minimizing the risks and providing intellectual challenges. With the use of leadership, managers and leaders shall evaluate new ideas and wait until the better ideas occur. The leaders should take leadership as an opportunity and challenge in both industrial and academic situations so that the ideas and the alternatives can be generated relevant to the situations, authorities and responsibilities can be delegated, and appropriated decisions can be made when required. Also, by using the tools like scientific exchange, research advancing, autonomy and freedom, the leaders can increase the interaction among the researchers and increase their involvement in creative process. This study was basically conducted to show how leadership behavior in knowledge networks stimulates creativity besides that this study also has highlighted some of the research implications. In the future, leaders must develop such a knowledge which assists them to network their leadership influence wide number of research groups. Currently this research only deals with the creativity of group members reports of leader creativity-stimulating behavior, but in the future new studies could explore leaders and/or neutral observers reports of creative leadership behavior. Finally, in the future longitudinal studies of research groups can be 5 Group-9: 13309, 13322, 13336 developed in order to observe the interactions between leaders and group members during recurrent time intervals through which creative process could be understand better. Overall Assessment This research article is significant in the sense it has attempted to conduct a study on a little researched topic. This study has made significant contributions to the topic, because previous studies failed to focus on the role of leadership as a driver of creativity. This research was conducted with the aim of understanding the role of leadership in creativity so the choice of research-based universities is a good choice. The inclusion of men and women in the study is also a merit. For determining the reliability of coding reliability check was done which yielded reliable but low results due to the use of participants own inferences. Another merit of the study was the use of Binomial p to test the match between observed and expected number of incidents. Also in the study a comparative examination was done through a consultation with an independent assessor yielding satisfactory results therefore, increasing the credibility of the study. The study is further strengthened by the clear explanations of leadership behaviors and critical incidents thereby making the study easy to understand. Thus, considering all the above points we can say this research is significant in mentioned terms.
Despite its merits and significance, the study has certain limitations. The study is confined to Swedish universities only thereby limiting its wide spread generalizability. Furthermore the leadership style depends greatly on the culture so the confinement to only one country may be a demerit of the study. For the study the participants were asked only for recent incidents, this may lead to recency bias thereby hampering the study. Another demerit of the study is that the incident where the leader hindered creativity has not been studied. Also the responses of the participants may be distorted by the pressure of their leaders. Therefore future researchers can overcome these limitations. The study can be replicated in other countries as well. Further all incidents should be considered, not only recent ones. Future researches can also be expanded to cover the hindrances caused by leaders and consider other methods of data collection.
Reference: Amabile. T. M. & Khaire. M. (2008). Creativity and Role of the Leader. Harward Business Review. Retrieved from: http://hbr.org/2008/10/creativity-and-the-role-of-the-leader/ar/1