Building top management muscle in a slow growth environment: How different is better at Greyhound Financial Corporation

The turbulence experienced in the 1980s in the U.S. business environment has led to something of a motivational crisis among corporate managers. Increased competition, budget constraints, and changing demographics are forcing companies into adopting strategies geared toward downsizing and flatter organizational structures. While corporate America probably has begun to accept its leaner profile, it has not yet successfully addressed the issue of how to keep the best managerial talent tuned in and turned on in an era of dwindling resources. This article describes and assesses one corporation\u27s efforts to maintain top-managerial motivation through a unique form of job swapping called the Muscle Building program at Greyhound Financial Corporation in Phoenix, Arizona. Muscle building. a top-management job rotation program, helps prevent career gridlock, fosters management diversity, and provides for top-management succession. Hidden costs and benefits of the program and issues concerning its implementation are discussed

Working With Creative Leaders: Exploring the Relationship Between Supervisors\u27 and Subordinates\u27 Creativity

We propose that supervisors\u27 own level of creativity is a core component of effective leadership that can be associated with subordinates\u27 self-concept and creativity. Specifically, drawing on the identity theory framework, and role identity theory in particular, we argue that subordinates\u27 creative role identity is an important underlying mechanism in the relationship between supervisors\u27 level of creativity and their subordinates\u27 creativity. Using a sample of 443 employees working with 44 supervisors in an IT firm, we hypothesized and found support for a moderated mediation model. There was a positive indirect relationship between supervisors\u27 creativity and their subordinates\u27 creativity via the subordinates\u27 creative role identity, and this indirect relationship was stronger when employees perceived higher levels of organizational support for creativity

The effects of goal setting procedures and personal discretion on individuals' creativity

This research examined whether situational factors have significant effects on individuals' creativity on job related problems. Three situational factors were examined: productivity goal setting, creativity goal setting (i.e., a goal to be creative), and personal discretion in work procedures. These factors were chosen because of the relevance to creativity and their use in organizations. A laboratory study was conducted with a 3 x 3 x 2 experimental design. Subjects worked on an in-basket exercise. Creativity was measured using a consensual assessment technique developed by Amabile (1983), in which three judges independently evaluated the overall creativity of each response generated. These ratings were then averaged across solutions generated by an individual to obtain a score indicating their overall level of creativity on the task. Results of a three-way ANOVA indicated that creativity was lowest in the following three conditions: when individuals were assigned to do your best productivity goal and no creativity goal, a difficult productivity goal and no creativity goal, or no creativity goal and low personal discretion. Results also indicated that both creativity and productivity were high when individuals were assigned a difficult productivity goal and a do your best creativity goal or a difficult productivity goal and a difficult creativity goal. These results were interpreted as indicated as indicating that productivity goals and low personal discretion in themselves do not harm creativity as long as a creativity goal is also assigned. However, when no creativity goal is assigned and individuals are given a productivity goal or low personal discretion in work procedures, their creativity appears to be detrimentally affected. Potential implications of these results for organizations interested in enhancing individuals' creativity and innovation are discussed.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio

Embracing multicultural tensions: How team members’ multicultural paradox mindsets foster team information elaboration and creativity

We explore why teams with the same level of cultural diversity can differ in their level of creativity. To this end, we introduce the concept of paradox mindsets to research on multicultural teams. We argue that team members with a high multicultural paradox mindset are accepting of and energized by intercultural tensions, both emphasizing cultural differences and finding common ground. Their presence thus enables multicultural teams to embrace these tensions and leverage their cultural diversity toward team creativity. Specifically, we hypothesize that teams with members that have a high multicultural paradox mindset are more creative because these members promote information elaboration at the team level, which in turn fosters creativity. We test our hypotheses in a study of 217 individuals randomly assigned to 63 culturally diverse teams. Results provide support for our overarching theory

Are Creative Individuals Bad Apples? A Dual Pathway Model of Unethical Behavior

Research has been inconsistent in its quest to discover whether dispositional creativity is associated with more or less unethical behavior. Drawing on social cognitive theory, we propose that moral disengagement and moral imagination are 2 parallel mechanisms that encourage or inhibit unethical behavior, and that which of these mediation processes occur depends on moral identity. Study 1, a 3-wave study of a food service organization, shows that employees high on both dispositional creativity and moral identity are less likely to be morally disengaged and behave less unethically. The results of Study 2 replicate Study 1’s findings in a scenario-based study of college students, and further show that individuals who are high on both dispositional creativity and moral identity are more likely to be morally imaginative and to behave less unethically. Theoretical and practical implications of our model are discussed