Information search and creativity: The role of need for cognition and personal involvement

The effects of type of personal involvement and need for cognition on information search behaviors and creative problem solving were investigated. It was predicted that participants who are involved through the personal relevancy of the outcome of a problem would engage in more information search behaviors and be more creative than participants who are involved through having their values and morals engaged. It was also predicted that participants high in need for cognition would engage in more information search behaviors and would be more creative than would participants low in need for cognition. Results showed that information search behaviors effectively predicted creative problem solving. Results also revealed advantages of high outcome involvement and detriments of high value involvement. Participants who were asked to provide a solution to a high outcome-involvement problem engaged in more information search behaviors and were more creative than participants who were asked to solve either a high value-involvement problem or a low involvement problem. Participants with high value involvement engaged in more information search behaviors but wrote solutions that were even less creative when compared to participants who had a low level of involvement. The effects of type of personal involvement on creative problem solving were not mediated by information search behaviors. Participants\u27 need for cognition was not related to information search behaviors or creativity. Based on the results, it is suggested that organizations can enhance employee creative problem solving by providing them with the time and resources needed to engage in information search and by creating high personal involvement in organizational outcomes. However, organizations should avoid heavily engaging employees\u27 values and morals because high value involvement can be detrimental to creative problem solving

Leadership and creativity: Understanding leadership from a creative problem-solving perspective

Employees in many jobs encounter novel, ill-defined problems, and finding creative solutions to these problems may be the critical factor that allows their organization to maintain a competitive advantage. Solving problems creatively requires extensive and effortful cognitive processing. This requirement is magnified further by the complex, ambiguous situations in which most organizational problems occur. Employees must define and construct a problem, search and retrieve problem-relevant information, and generate and evaluate a diverse set of alternative solutions. Creativity necessitates that all these activities are completed effectively. It is unlikely, therefore, that creative outcomes will be realized without a large degree of support from organizations and organizational leaders. In order to provide this support, leaders must understand the cognitive requirements of creative problem solving. To this end, this paper reviews the cognitive processes underlying creative problem solving and suggests avenues through which organizational leaders can facilitate these processes in an effort to enhance the creative problem solving of their employees

Responding Destructively in Leadership Situations: The Role of Personal Values and Problem Construction

This study explored the influence of personal values on destructive leader behavior. Student participants completed a managerial assessment center that presented them with ambiguous leadership decisions and problems. Destructive behavior was defined as harming organizational members or striving for short-term gains over long-term organizational goals. Results revealed that individuals with self-enhancement values were more destructive than individuals with self-transcendence values were, with the core values of power (self-enhancement) and universalism (self-transcendence) being most influential. Results also showed that individuals defined and structured leadership problems in a manner that reflected their value systems, which in turn affected the problem solutions they generated

Conscientiousness Is Not Always a Good Predictor of Performance: The Case of Creativity

Meta-analyses investigating the relationship between Conscientiousness and performance suggest a positive relationship for a variety of criteria. However, recently it has been argued that Conscientiousness is not always a good predictor of performance, particularly for creative performance. Additionally, it has been suggested that Conscientiousness includes two distinct components, achievement and dependability, which may have different relationships with criterion measures. Two studies were conducted to determine whether the components of Conscientiousness predict creativity better than the full factor. Students in each study completed a measure of the Five Factor Model and a measure of creative performance. In the first study, creative accomplishments were measured and in the second study, creative problem solving was measured. As predicted, both studies revealed a cooperative suppression effect when analyzing the conscientiousness components together such that achievement was positively related and dependability negatively related to creative performance. Also, both studies showed that the overall Conscientiousness factor was not related to creativity

Effective versus destructive leader behavior: The motivating role of personal values

This research explored the role of values in the problem-solving and decision-making activities of leaders using an established and validated theory on the content and structure of personal values. Undergraduate student participants completed a managerial assessment center that required them to solve managerial problems, complete an in-basket exercise, and respond to several questionnaires. Participants\u27 past leadership activities were assessed along with their willingness to engage in destructive leader behavior and their ability to generate original, high quality solutions to leadership problems. Destructiveness was defined as striving for personal gains over collective organizational interests and/or focusing on short-term gains over long-term organizational goals. Results revealed that achievement values and power values were positively related to leader emergence whereas hedonism goals were negatively related to leader emergence. Participants\u27 value systems were also found to predict their willingness to engage in destructive behavior. In addition, having an authority figure support destructiveness moderated the effect of values such that with the support of the company president, participants with self-enhancement values were more destructive than were those with self-transcendence values. These groups did not differ when the authority support was not present. Results also showed that participants\u27 defined an ambiguous leadership problem in a manner that reflected their personal values, which mediated the relationship between values and solution destructiveness. Although personal values influenced problem definitions and the destructiveness of problem solutions, they did not directly affect the quality, originality, or creativity of the problem solutions. However, participants who engaged in problem construction generated solutions that were more original, higher in quality, and more creative than did participants who did not engage in problem construction. Overall, results of this study provided empirical support for the popular assertion that personal values play an important role in organizational leadership. Implications of the results for today\u27s organizational are discussed along with suggestions for future empirical research that will help to delineate further the complex influence personal values have on organizational behavior

The Effects of Type and Level of Personal Involvement on Information Search and Problem Solving

The effects of type and level of personal involvement on information search and problem solving were investigated in a laboratory setting. Participants were given a problem eliciting high value involvement, high outcome involvement, or low involvement. Before providing a solution to the problem, participants had the opportunity to search for additional information about the problem using a computer. The amount of information searched and the time spent searching were measured, as was the quality of problem solutions. Results showed that increases in information search resulted in more original and more appropriate problem solutions. Results also revealed that solution originality and appropriateness were highest among participants who were involved because the problem\u27s outcome was relevant to them and lowest among participants who were involved because the problem affected their values and morals. The results of this study indicate that high involvement may not be universally beneficial to the generation of high-quality problem solutions

Explicit Instructions to Be Creative and Original: A Comparison of Strategies and Criteria as Targets With Three Types of Divergent Thinking Tests

Explicit instructions are often used to enhance performance on tests of divergent thinking. Previous research has not, however, compared explicit instructions which focus on criteria with those that focus on tactics. It is one thing to be instructed to be original (one possible criterion) and quite another to be given procedures to find original ideas (e.g., think of things that will be thought of by no one else ). The research reported in the present article was designed with that in mind. In addition to comparing the different types of instructions, it also compared college-students (N = 211) who received instructions which varied in the degree of explicitness of the applicable strategy. Regression analyses indicated that the procedural instructions had a more robust impact on divergent thinking than did the conceptual instructions. This difference was especially clear when the divergent thinking tests were scored for ideational originality. Implications for the educational setting and for established group techniques (e.g., brainstorming)are explored

Responding Destructively in Leadership Situations: The Role of Personal Values and Problem Construction

personal values, beliefs, destructive leadership, ethical decision making,