presentation

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Ou Shuli, I come from the school of Materials Science and Engineering. Today, Zhu Yue and I will make a presentation about the paper: What leaders need to know: A review of social and contextual factors that can foster or hinder creativity.AbstractThis article provides a current review of research examining contextual factors that can either foster or hinder employee creativity at the individual, job, group, and organizational level. Specifically, we examine the role of leadership and the use of different human resource practices for developing a work context that is supportive of creativity. Finally, based on our review, we discuss practical implications for managers, propose areas that need further research attention, and highlight possible new directions for future research.IntroductionIncreasingly, creativity has become valued across a variety of tasks, occupations, and industries. In today’s fast-paced dynamic work environment, managers continue to realize that to remain competitive they need their employees to be actively involved in their work and trying to generate novel and appropriate products, processes, and approaches. That is, Employees who are more creative will be more competitive in their work. Most managers would say that they would like their employees to be more creative, but it has not always been clear how managers should lead for creative performance to occur. To date, the focus of prior work on the importance of leadership for creativity has predominantly centered on the relationship between leader behaviors and employee creativity and the creativity of the leader themselves. So in this article, we focus on how human resource practices can be used by leaders to develop a work context that ultimately enhances their employees’ creativity.Leadership and the definition of creativityMuch of the empirical research has defined creativity as an outcome, focusing on the production of new and useful ideas concerning products, services, processes, and procedures. Creative outcomes can range from minor adaptations in workflow or products to major breakthroughs and the development of new products or processes. It is important to clearly differentiate creativity from innovation. Creativity involves producing novel and useful products, processes, or services. While innovation refers to the implementation of ideas at the individual, group, or organizational level. Creativity is important in and of itself and can be conceptualized as a necessary first step or precondition required for innovation. At any given time, a single manager may be overseeing employees who are working toward creative outcomes. As such, a key component necessary for creativity is the context within which the creativity takes place because creative outcomes cannot and do not occur in a vacuum. In order for creativity to occur, leadership needs to play an active role in fostering, encouraging, and supporting creativity.Social and contextual factorsThere are several Social and contextual factors that have been found to influence the occurrence of creativity. That is, Individual-level factors, Job-level factors, Team or work group factors and Organizational-level factors.Individual-level factorsIndividual-level factors include Personality traits, Creativity relevant skills, Domain-specific knowledge, Experience, Intrinsic motivation and Risks. Personality traits include broad interests, independence of judgment, autonomy, and a firm sense of self as creative. Creativity relevant skills can be defined as the ability to think creatively, generate alternatives, engage in divergentthinking, or suspend judgment. Domain-specific knowledge reflects an individual’s level of education, training, experience, and knowledge within a particular context. Experience in a field also can be a necessary component for creative success because an individual needs some level of familiarity to perform creative work. Creativity also requires some level of internal, sustaining force that pushes individuals to persevere in the face of challenges inherent to creative work. Creativity inherently involves risks. That is, to develop new and useful products or processes, individuals have to be willing to try and to possibly fail.Job-level factorsJob-level factors include Job characteristics, Role expectations and goals, Sufficient resources, Rewards, Supervisory support and External evaluation of work.Job characteristicsComplex and demanding jobs result in creative outcomes. While more simple and routinized jobs may not motivate employees to perform creatively. Giving appropriate levels of autonomy to employees may be useful for the occurrence of creativity.Role expectations and goalsGoals increase attention and effort by providing clear targets toward which individuals can direct their energies. Goals regulate action directly by affecting what people pay attention to, how hard they work, and how long they persist on a task. Leaders can make creativity a requirement of the job.Sufficient resourcesSufficient time, material resources and people is important for the occurrence of creativity. RewardsThere are two kinds of view about the impact of rewards on creativity. Some research suggested that it is intrinsic motivation rather than the expectation of receiving extrinsic rewards that fosters creativity. While some experts argued that rewards are not bad for creativity but two critical factors that need to be considered are what types of behaviors are being rewarded and how the rewards are distributed.Supervisory supportThe link between supervisory support and creativity has been relatively well established in the literature. S cientists’ creativity was higher when managers listened to their employees’ concerns and asked for their input into decisions affecting them. Negative feedback from leaders inhibited scientists’ creativity.Leader behaviors that contributed to problem construction and feelings of high self-efficacy led to greater subordinate creativity. The quality of the exchange or relationship between a supervisor and his or her subordinate was related to the subordinate’s innovativeness. Based on the research, managers should work on encouraging and supporting their employees as well as developing nurturing relationships.External evaluation of workResearch suggested that expected evaluation is not necessarily harmful to creativity and can actually be beneficial to creativity in certain situations. Providing employees with performance feedback is a key function that many managers struggle with. Giving feedback can be particularly important for creativity and yet particularly difficult in that creativity often involves trying new things and taking risks. Leaders should provide support for role expectations of creativity by providing an environment where employees expect to receive constructive, developmental feedback on their work.。