A Multi-disciplinary Perspective on Decision-making and Creativity:

1. A Multi-disciplinary Perspective on Decision-making and Creativity: Using the Diversity of Truth-seeking and Sense-making to Advantage in Organizational Contexts Wayne Smith, Ph.D. Department of Management CSU Northridge

2. 11 – Creativity (Runco Book)

3. Creativity (Runco Book) • Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (1983) • Verbal symbolic • Spatial • Interpersonal • Bodily-kinesthetic • Mathematical • Intrapersonal • Musical • Can you identify one or more of these in the job descriptions, performance evaluations, and promotion criteria within an organization?

4. Creativity (Runco Book) • Is “creativity” the wrong word to use in an organizational context? • Remember, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” (Drucker) • If attitude -> perspective -> behavior -> performance… • Then perhaps conscientiousness -> creativity -> impact -> value • Again, can you identify a pattern and practice of creativity principles and culture that leads to success within an organization? • Runco suggests just the language and cultural barriers alone are enough to stifle effective creativity • He offers the terms “enhancement” or “fulfillment of potential” instead

5. Creativity (Runco Book) • Ekvall and Ryhammar (1999) find that creative outcomes are most likely if the organization does the following (organizational-level measurement) • Challenges individuals with tasks that are meaningful. • Employees have opportunities and initiative. • There must be support (encouragement and reward) for new ideas. • Employees must be trusted and feel that trust (viscerally). • There is a permissive environment with frequent discussion and debate, but no animosity. • Risk-taking is supported; experiments are tolerated. Most important, risk is viewed as a part of the creative process. • In other words, what is the true and palpable “creative climate” of an organization?

6. Creativity (Runco Book) • Ekvall and Ryhammar (1999) suggest the following attributes be measured at the organizational-level (a “creativity audit”) • Support for ideas • Challenge • Time for ideas • Freedom • Trust and openness • Dynamism/liveliness • Risk-taking • Playfulness and humor • Debates • Conflicts and impediments • Could you write one or more survey questions that would elicit reliable and valid responses from an organization’s various constituencies?

7. Creativity (Runco Book) • Jones Inventory of Barriers to Effective Problem-Solving (individual-level measurement) • Need to identify “barriers” and “absence of barriers” • Four Key Dimensions (for example, on a Survey) • Strategy Questions • E.g., “I like to keep strictly to time schedules.” v. “I am easygoing about time-keeping” • Values Questions • E.g., “Rigid moral standards are unreasonable” v. “Modern moral standards are too slack” • Perceptual Questions • E.g., “I never forget a face” v. “I have a poor memory for faces” • Self-Image Questions • E.g., “I try to avoid competition” v. “I like to win” • See also (Torrance Tests)--http://www.ststesting.com/ngifted.html

8. Creativity (Runco Book) • Strategies for Creative Problem-solving (Logstin, 1993) • Taking a fresh look at interactions • Restating the Problem • Visualizing fruitful analogies • Searching for useful order of magnitude changes • Staying alert to happy serendipity, and • Breaking your problem apart and putting it back together

9. Creativity (Runco Book) • The Correlates of Creativity • Intelligence • Imagination • Originality • Innovation • Invention • Discovery • Serendipity • Intentions • Adaptability • Flexibility • Evolution • (you knew this was coming) Does your organization craft/cultivate, promote/fund, and measure/manage one or more of these attributes?

10. Creativity (Runco Book) • One last word (Wayne speaking here) • I think you need multiple methods to evaluate creativity at either the individual-level or the organizational-level • Survey • History • First-person observation • Artifact analysis (e.g., documents and communications) • Quantitative analysis (e.g., financial performance) • Qualitative analysis (e.g., interviews) • Perception by external constituencies (e.g., customers and suppliers) • (and perhaps more…Management study is hard work!)

11. Sources • Runco, M. (2007), Creativity, Elsevier.