This study examines the mediating effect of the entity based creativity on the interaction between complexity theory and creativity among faculty members in higher education organizations. The purpose of study was to investigate how mechanisms for intellectual productivity and creativity foster intellectual and disciplinary interactions among faculty members in higher education. The theoretical framework of complexity theory and KEYS model constructs were employed in order to examine how complexity dynamics, motivation, stimulants and inhibitors foster faculty creativity in higher education.
The Partial Least Square of Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze data using the PLS algorithm, bootstrapping and predictive relevance (Q2 ) to assess the predictive accuracy on creativity among 73 tenure and tenure-track faculty members in south east research based university in the United States. The result showed that stimulant resource, inhibitors and stimulant new-thinking was identified as constructs with the strongest effect on creativity. The findings also reveal that indicator types like organizational impediments, psychological safety, organizational encouragement, freedom, organizational pressure, fun and novelty/ originality had the greatest impact on faculty creativity in higher education. These outcomes suggest implications for faculty members, research, policy, practice. Finding in this study is consistent with complexity theorists arguments that appropriate amounts of pressure encourages workers to seek creative solutions to challenges in an effort to control that pressure and the issues of trust, confidence and organizational encouragement are important in fostering creativity
