Ministry of Education of Republic of Moldova

Moldova State University

The Faculty of Economic Sciences
Business and Administration department

Essay:
Theme: “ Creativity factors“

Author : Mazil Adrian

Group: BA1703A

Chișinău – 2019
 CREATIVITY:
Creativity is a divergent thinking in problem solving (Guilford, 1959). That is a process involving
sensation of the gaps or the missing elements, hypothesis, communication of the results and
modification and retesting of the hypothesis (Paul Torrance, 1984). It is officially described as a
development of ideas, outcomes, products or solutions which are original, new and has an
appropriate and potential use for the situation (Madjar, 2005: 184). The act of creativity that helps in
generating a creative product involves number of underlying processes (Mark A. Runco, Steven R.
Pritzke, 1999). There are contextual influences which include encouragement from the organisation
and the superior head, support from the group for creativity, sufficient resources and independence
to work (Amabile et al, 1996). Creativity is an organisation tool to its capacity to innovate (Martins,
Gilson & Maynard, 2004). Managers are crucial force in the determination of employee creative
behaviour and role performance where he structures the work environment through rewards,
expectations and feedback (Shalley & Gilson, 2004). According to Torrence tests of creative
thinking, creativity involves various abilities such as fluency where able to produce more ideas in a
prescribed time period, flexibility is the cognitive approach in response to a problem, originality is
the rareness of the response and elaboration is the level of details in the responses (Guilford, 1950 &
Torrance, 1974).

FACTORS INFLUENCING CREATIVITY:

The factors which can influence the creativity can be categorized into two factors such as Individual
and Organization Influences.

Individual influence:

Cognitive process of influence is one important factor for the Individual influence which means the
individual’s ability to generate several potential solutions to a problem. Personality characteristics
such as intellectual and artistic values, high energy, breadth of interests, concerned with
achievement, freedom of judgement, self-confidence, creative self image, a desire for recognition ,
tolerance for ambiguity, risk taking, intrinsic motivation are associated with creativity (Janakiram &
Rizwana, 2011:23).

Organizational influence:

The organizational factor can either support creativity or obstruct it. The organizational
characteristics include feeling of autonomy, being part of a team with diverse skill and having
creative supervisors and examines. Hence having the high quality skilled supervisors enable the
organizations to more effective and also make them to take decisions making related to improve
creativity. Thus focusing on how work is going to be executed, being closely monitored while one is
working. Comparing with other people may result solve risk situations, harsh criticism of new ideas,
destructive internal problems and neglect of risk obstructs creativity (Janakiram & Rizwana,
2011:23).
 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CREATIVITY AND
MOTIVATION:
Creativity is a combination of cognitive, metacognitive and components of motivation (MacKinnon,
1965; Mumford & Gustafson, 1988). Motivation is the significant factor involved in the concept of
creativity denoting creative potential won’t be fulfilled with motivation of individual to do so and
solutions would be creative only if oneself applies his/her creative skills (Andrew J. Elliot, Carol S.
Dweck, 2005).

THEORIES OF CREATIVITY:
There are four main perspectives on creativity such as creative person, creative product, creative
process and the environment for creativity (Mooney, 1963; Rhode, 1961; Ryhammar & Brolin,
1990). Theories of creativity takes two or more of these perspectives such as Adaption- Innovation
theory focuses on creative person and concentrates on individual differences (Kirton, 1976) and
Componential model of creativity focuses on the role of work environment (Amabile, 1988, 1997).
There are four major organisational creativity theories such as Componential theory of creativity,
Interactionist theory of creativity, multiple social domain theory and Investment theory of creativity.

FIGURE 2: Showing Componential Theory of influencing creativity in individual.

Source: Teresa Amabile, 1996 "Creativity in Context".

The componential model of creativity proposes that intrinsic task motivation; task related skills
which are the expertise and creativity relevant skills and processes have an impact on the creativity
of the employees at work (Amabile, 1988). Intrinsic motivation arises from the positive to the task
qualities and thus intrinsic motivated employee feel interested to work and enjoys their work and
attempts to be creative (Amabile, 1996). Task related skills are the one’s specialised knowledge in a
specific domain where such skills can be reflected with the variables such as self-efficacy on own
job and clear understanding of goals and processes (Amabile, 1988 & Sawyer, 1992). Job efficacy is
the individual’s on-the-job skills and abilities involving his/her confidence and perceived mastery in
job (Paul Joseph Eder, 2007). Hence self-efficacy in a specific job helps as a precursor to
individual’s generation of new ideas and products in that field (Bandura, 1977). Thus self-efficacy
in a task makes one’s thought to go beyond just a job and to be more creative (Tierney & Farmer,
2002).

Creativity related skills and processes are the abilities which can be either innate or developed helps
to generate creative ideas and also in recognizing, exploring and solving problems creatively (Costa
& McCrae, 1992). Creative relevant process can be explored with factors such as creative self-
efficacy, creative cognitive style and openness to experience on creativity (Scott & Bruce, 1984:
Tierney, 1997). Creative self-efficacy is the individual’s belief to produce creative ideas on self and
it makes him or her to take creative risks and explore creative ways to solve problem thus related to
employee creativity (Tierney & Farmer, 2002, 2004) Cognitive style is the one’s mental method of
gathering information from the surrounding and integrating the collected information into their
existing cognitive models (Hayes Allison, 1998). Hence employees with creative cognitive style
would approach tasks creatively and original and new ideas (Kirton, 1976). The term openness to
environment is the search of new and different experience which leads to creative exploration and
new idea generation (Costa & McCrae, 1992).

Integrationist theory of creativity considers individual functions to be affected with various factors
such as antecedent conditions, cognitive style, personality factors, related knowledge, motivation,
social influence and contextual influence (Woodman, Sawyer & Griffin, 1993). The antecedent
conditions are the demographic and socio-economic factor that combines with the individual’s
cognitive and personality variables, skills and motivation and lastly are influenced by social and
contextual variables (Woodman and Schoenfeldt, 1990). This theory mainly focuses interaction
between the individual and contextual influences of the situation as a significant factor for creative
behaviour (Alisa H. Watt, 2007)

The third theory is the multiple social domain theory which is the extension of componential and
integrationist theory of creativity. The theory focuses on the individual’s habitual and creative
actions when are in competition where individual likely to reject creative actions if without
conditions favourable for creativity whereas habitual actions are attractive (Ford, 1996). There are
four domains which influence creative actions such as groups, organisations, institutional
environment and market with each domain with its related fields. The theory suggests that the
interaction between the domains, fields and creative actors determines the viability of acting
creatively (Ford, 1996: 1132). The theory emphasises on knowledge and ability as well as
motivation where it is comprised of goal, belief of one’s creativity, belief on positive response for
the creativity and emotional state of the creative actors. Hence manager can influence employee
creativity by creating impact of employee’s self-efficacy beliefs and/or on knowledge and skills
beliefs (Alisa, H. Watt, 2007)

Lastly the investment theory of creativity focuses on multiple factors which affect creative actions.
This theory emphasises creative individuals "buy low and sell high in the realm of ideas" (Stemberg
& Lubart, 1996). It means investing in an unknown idea which is potential and once the idea is
developed and proved to be worth, moving to the next idea. Abilities, knowledge, cognitive style,
personality, motivation and environment are the resources to make creativity (Alisa H Watt, 2007)