Organizational Learning Mechanisms and Creative Climate: Insights from an Italian Fashion Design Company

This paper investigates the relationship between different types of organizational learning mechanisms and creative climate. In the context of an action research study, this paper focuses on insights from a survey that was administered to all the employees of the Product Design and Development unit of the company. The results demonstrate that the three different types of organizational learning mechanisms considered in the study (cognitive, structural and procedural mechanisms) are associated with creative climate. The study generates new scientific knowledge about the role of organizational learning mechanisms and provides specific recommendations for organizations that aim to enhance creative climate

Does organizational creativity always drive market performance?

This study develops and tests arguments that the relationship between organizational creativity and market performance is channeled through new product development (NPD) capability, and that the indirect effect of creativity on performance, via NPD capability, is conditional upon levels of environment dynamism and market responsiveness. The proposed relationships are tested on a sample of 221 small- andmedium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a major sub-Saharan Africanmarket. Findings from the study indicate that process and product NPD capabilities partially mediate the effect of novelty and usefulness elements of organizational creativity on market performance. The study further finds that while environment dynamism weakens the indirect effects of novelty and usefulness of organizational creativity, via process and product NPD capabilities, on market performance, the effects are strengthened under conditions of greater responsiveness to target market needs.A theoretical contribution from this study is the finding that how organizational creativity dimensions drive market performance is more complex than previously thought: it depends on whether or not organizational creativity components are first used to develop an organization's process and product innovation capabilities, and whether target market environment conditions are dynamic and an organization has ability to respond to target market demands

The Impact of a Creativity-supporting Work Environment on a Firm's Product Innovation Performance

Many scholars and practitioners have suggested that a creativity-supporting work environment contributes to a firm's product innovation performance. Although there is evidence that such an environment enhances innovative behavior at individual level, very few studies address the effect of a creativity-supporting work environment on product innovation performance at firm level, and the results are inconsistent. This paper examines the relationship between a firm's creativity-supporting work environment and a firm's product innovation performance in a sample of 103 firms. For measuring a firm's creativity-supporting work environment, a comprehensive and creativity-focused framework is used. The framework consists of 9 social-organizational and 12 physical work environment characteristics that are likely to enhance employee creativity. These characteristics contribute to the firm's overall work environment that supports creativity. The firm's product innovation performance is defined by two distinct concepts: new product productivity (NP productivity), which is the extent to which the firm introduces new products to the market, and new product success (NP success), which is the percentage of the firm's sales from new products. In most firms, different knowledgeable informants provided the data for the variables. The results show that firms with creativity-supporting work environments introduce more new products to the market (NP productivity), and have more NP success in terms of new product sales (NP success). NP productivity partly mediates the relationship between creativity-supporting work environment and NP success. The mediation model shows that the two paths from a creativity-supporting work environment to NP success are about equally important: the direct path between creativity-supporting work environment and NP success has a coefficient of .22, and the coefficient of the indirect path via NP productivity is .23. The creativity-supporting work environment framework can be used in managerial practice to enhance employee creativity for product innovation. It allows applying a flexible and broad approach by influencing both social-organizational and physical characteristics of the work environment