Creative professionals can have different approaches towards a design task. A professional can have a preference for a rational approach, while another professional prefers an intuitive approach. These approaches refer to a rational or an intuitive thinking style. Thinking styles are related to employees’ creativity. Some scientists have studied the relationship between different aspects of the rational and/or intuitive thinking style and employee creativity. The results of these studies were inconsistent. Perhaps this is due to the fact that these studies disregard the relationship between the rational and intuitive thinking style. Several scientists support the idea that this relationship is important for employee creativity. The aim of this study is to answer the question what the effect is of the rational and intuitive thinking style, separately and in combination, on employee creativity. This relationship between rational and intuitive thinking style and employee creativity has not yet been studied by explanatory research. Limited research is also conducted to the domain of creative professionals in the sector of creative services. The research presented here is based on a cross-sectional survey of 99 creative professionals in the sector of the Dutch creative services. Snowball sampling was used for selecting the creative professionals. The Rational-Experiential Inventory is used for measuring the rational and intuitive thinking style. Employee creativity is measured by a questionnaire based on the framework of idea-generation, idea-promotion and idea-realisation. Hierarchical regression was conducted for testing hypotheses. The results show a positive relationship between employee creativity and the rational and intuitive thinking style. There is not a significant interaction-effect of the rational and intuitive thinking style on employee creativity
