Why Seeking Help From Teammates is a Blessing and a Curse: A Theory of Help Seeking and Individual Creativity in Team Contexts

Research has not explored the extent to which seeking help from teammates positively relates to a person\u27s own creativity. This question is important to explore as help seeking is commonly enacted in organizations and may come with reciprocation costs that may also diminish creativity. Results based on 291 employees in a single division of a large multinational organization revealed that seeking help predicted creativity and mediated the relationship between intrinsic motivation and creativity. However, help seekers also incurred reciprocation costs in that they tended to give more help to teammates, and giving help to teammates was negatively related to creativity. In general, giving higher levels of help attenuated the positive relationship between help seeking and creativity. We also tested an integrated model to show that help giving moderated the mediated relationship between intrinsic motivation and creativity via help seeking, such that higher levels of help giving attenuated this mediated effect. We discuss theoretical and practical implications recommending additional research regarding the interpersonal creative process in team contexts

Recognizing Creative Leadership: Can Creative Idea Expression Negatively Relate to Perceptions of Leadership Potential?

Drawing on and extending prototype theories of creativity and leadership, we theorize that the expression of creative ideas may diminish judgments of leadership potential unless the charismatic leadership prototype is activated in the minds of social perceivers. Study 1 shows that creative idea expression is negatively related to perceptions of leadership potential in a sample of employees working in jobs that required creative problem solving. Study 2 shows that participants randomly instructed to express creative solutions during an interaction are viewed as having lower leadership potential. A third scenario study replicated this finding showing that participants attributed less leadership potential to targets expressing creative ideas, except when the “charismatic” leader prototype was activated. In sum, we show that the negative association between expressing creative ideas and leadership potential is robust and underscores an important but previously unidentified bias against selecting effective leaders

Extending past research in extra-role behavior: "Unleasing a new paradigm from the prism of knowledge sharing and whistleblowing"

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Me or We? The role of personality and justice as other-centered antecedents to innovative citizenship behaviors within organizations

The present research takes an `' other-centered `' approach to examining personal and contextual antecedents of taking charge behavior in organizations. Largely consistent with the authors' hypotheses, regression analyses involving data collected from 2 diverse samples containing both coworkers and supervisors demonstrated that the other-centered trait, duty, was positively related to taking charge, whereas the self-centered trait, achievement striving, was negatively related to taking charge. In addition, the authors found that procedural justice at the organizational. level was positively related to taking charge when evaluated by a coworker, while both procedural and distributive justice were positively related to taking charge when considered by a supervisor. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed

Motivating knowledge sharing

Research Paper Series (National University of Singapore. Faculty of Business Administration); 2005-0161-1

Why and when do motives matter? An integrative model of motives, role cognitions, and social support as predictors of OCB

We extend prior thinking about citizenship behavior by integrating employee motives, social support,and role cognitions as predictors of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Drawing on trait activationand situated self theories, we provide insights into why and when motives predict OCB using multisourcedata from two field samples. In Study 1, we demonstrate that the quality of social support functionsas a boundary condition that qualifies relations of motives with OCB. In Study 2, we introduce rolecognitions as a proximal motivational factor that mediates the motives by social support interactionswith OCB. Our results support the hypothesized moderated mediated model and enhance understandingof OCB by integrating the OCB motive and role cognition literatures, which to date have developed separately.As our results demonstrate, role cognitions, which are domain-specific felt obligations to performOCB, mediate relations of more distal predispositions to perform OCB with helping and voice citizenship behaviors