Perspectives on the Social Psychology of Creativity

Scholars began serious study into the social psychology of creativity about 25 years after the field of creativity research had taken root. Over the past 35 years, examination of social and environmental influences on creativity has become increasingly vigorous, with broad implications for the psychology of human performance, and with applications to education, business, and beyond. In this article, we revisit the origins of the social psychology of creativity, trace its arc, and suggest directions for its future

Helping You Help Me: The Role of Diagnostic (In)congruence in the Helping Process within Organizations

Through an inductive, multi-method field study at a major design firm, we investigated the helping process in project work and how that process affects the success of a helping episode, as perceived by help-givers and/or -receivers. We used daily diary entries and weekly interviews from four project teams, and a separate sample of critical incident interviews, to induce process models of successful and unsuccessful helping episodes. We found that, in unsuccessful episodes, help-givers and -receivers maintained incongruent expectations and project understandings throughout the episode, which we call diagnostic incongruence. In contrast, the parties in successful episodes engaged in aligning practices that fostered shared expectations and project understandings (i.e., diagnostic congruence). Importantly, aligning practices in successful episodes occurred before or at the beginning of episodes. We also found that people’s assessments of unsuccessful episodes were often marked by intense emotionality, which sometimes led them to disregard whether the helping resulted in instrumental progress. We discuss the implications of our process model for theory and practice

J. Richard Hackman (1940-2013)

When J. Richard Hackman died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on January 8, 2013, psychology lost a giant. Six and a half feet tall, with an outsize personality to match, Richard was the leading scholar in two distinct areas: work design and team effectiveness. In both domains, his work is foundational. Throughout his career, Richard applied rigorous methods to problems of great social importance, tirelessly championing multi-level analyses of problems that matter. His impact on our field has been immense

Knowledge and innovation: The strings between global and local dimensions of sustainable growth

The modern growth literature pays much attention to innovation and knowledge as drivers of endogenous developments in a competitive open economic system. This paper reviews concisely the literature in this field and addresses in particular micro- and macro-economic interactions at local or regional levels, based on clustering and networking principles, in which sustainability conditions also play a core role. The paper then develops a so-called knowledge circuit model comprising the relevant stakeholders, which aims to offer a novel framework for applied policy research at the meso-economic level

(Re) defining salesperson motivation: current status, main challenges, and research directions

The construct of motivation is one of the central themes in selling and sales management research. Yet, to-date no review article exists that surveys the construct (both from an extrinsic and intrinsic motivation context), critically evaluates its current status, examines various key challenges apparent from the extant research, and suggests new research opportunities based on a thorough review of past work. The authors explore how motivation is defined, major theories underpinning motivation, how motivation has historically been measured, and key methodologies used over time. In addition, attention is given to principal drivers and outcomes of salesperson motivation. A summarizing appendix of key articles in salesperson motivation is provided

Diary Study Database

The Diary Study (also known as The T.E.A.M. Study or The Progress Principle Study) was carried out in the late 1990s to early 2000s in order to probe the everyday work experiences of professionals working on important innovation projects within their companies. Teresa Amabile was the principal investigator. The database contains quantitative data and detailed categorical coding of qualitative data (not the verbatim qualitative data itself). Data were collected daily from the 238 professionals in 26 project teams who participated in this study throughout the entire course of a project (or discrete project phase) that required creativity – novel, useful ideas – in order to be successful. Many of the projects involved new product development. To the extent possible, daily data collection with a given team began on the first day of the project and continued until the last day. A large body of additional data on the individuals and their performance was collected at various other points during the study. The 26 teams were recruited from seven different companies in three industries: high tech, chemicals, and consumer products. Five of the companies had four teams that participated; one company had five teams; and one company had one team. (Please see the Metadata tab, below, for full description.)The primary source of data is the Daily Questionnaire (DQ) diary form that each participant was emailed each workday, Monday through Friday, throughout the course of the project on which the participant’s team was working. Participants were asked to return the completed diary, which took most people 5-10 minutes to complete, shortly before the end of their workday. Most did complete the diary on the day that the diary referred to, but some habitually completed the diary early the next day. The overall response rate was 75%, yielding a total of 11,637 individual daily diary entries.The DQ, which was identical for each day, contained questions calling for Likert-scale responses to questions about psychological state that day: (a) emotions; (b) motivation; and (c) perceptions of the project supervisor, the project team, the work environment, and the work itself. In addition, participants completed an open-ended question asking them to describe one event that stood out in their minds from the day that was relevant to the work in some way – the “Event Description” (ED) – and then answered additional Likert-scale questions about the event. The DQ included a few additional quantitative items.Although the DQ forms collected both quantitative and qualitative data (the EDs), the raw qualitative data are not included in this database. All included data have been de-identified, and it was not possible to adequately disguise the qualitative data. However, this database contains codes from several different coding schemes that prior researchers using this database created to categorize the events (and attributes of events) that participants reported in their EDs. Of the two primary coding schemes, the Detailed Event Narrative Analysis (DENA) scheme is extremely detailed; the Broad Event Narrative Analysis (BENA) scheme is considerably less detailed. In addition, several LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) analyses of the EDs are included in this database.A great deal of additional quantitative data was collected from all participants at various points in the study of their teams, including: demographics; personality; job satisfaction; cognitive style; motivational orientation; broad perceptions of the work environment, the project team, and the project; and monthly assessments of the performance of themselves and each of their teammates.Data were also collected from multiple managers in the participant’s area of the organization, who were broadly familiar with projects in that area. These managers completed monthly surveys assessing each of the participating projects, as well as a set of comparable but non-participating projects, on several dimensions.The book, The Progress Principle (Amabile, T. & Kramer, S., 2011, Harvard Business Publishing), reports a number of findings derived from quantitative and qualitative analyses of this database. The Research Appendix of this book contains descriptions (written in non-technical terms) of the Diary Study companies, participants, procedure, data collection instruments, data, and primary analyses conducted by Amabile and her colleagues. The Dataverse record lists several papers that used this database. Like the book, they can be used for additional information about the data collection methods and instruments as well as findings.Approval is required for use of this data. To apply for access, fill out the Diary Study application for use; make sure first you already have a Dataverse account

In Pursuit of Everyday Creativity

Creativity researchers have long paid careful attention to individual creativity, beginning with studies of well-known geniuses, and expanding to personality, biographical, cognitive, and social-psychological studies of individual creative behavior. Little is known, however, about the everyday psychological experience and associated creative behavior in the life and work of ordinary individuals. Yet evidence is mounting that such individuals can be responsible for important instances of creativity and innovation in the world: open innovation, user innovation, and citizen innovation. Research into this phenomenon could do much to advance the study and practice of creativity