Employees Motivation: “How to Kill Creativity?” Report

Many practitioners and scholars show considerable interest in methods aimed to boost creativity in companies. As such, creativity can be defined as the generation of ideas that are unique and useful and it is often regarded as a basis for achieving competitive advantages in business (Zhang & Gheibi 2015).

After decades of investigating psychological forces driving creative behaviors, researchers defined intrinsic motivation, associated with interest in certain activities and desire to learn new things, as a core aspect of creativity (Zhang & Gheibi 2015). For a long time, intrinsic motivation theories formed a basis in the study of organizational creativity, and Teresa Amabile, a professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, is one of the scholars who rely on those theories in her research.

The purpose of the present report is to analyze Amabile’s article entitled “How to Kill Creativity.” The article was published in the September-October issue of Harvard Business Review in 1998. In this piece, Amabile (1998) defines creative behaviors and explains major organizational factors that may inhibit creativity in employees and interfere with firms’ innovativeness. She claims that expertise, creative-thinking skills, and motivation are the core components of creativity and that managers and leaders can influence all of them either favorably or adversely.

At the same time, she indicates that intrinsic motivation is the most important factor defining creative behaviors of workers and by far the most manageable because it requires less investment of time and resources and is directly linked to the characteristics of the organizational environment.

The author’s thesis is as follows: managers can foster greater employee motivation through appropriate task allocation, provision of work autonomy and the right amount of resources, supervisory and organizational support, and creation of teams characterized by diversity. Considering this, the present report will explore the validity of findings discussed in Amabile’s work and evaluate their applicability to real-life situations.

Consistently with the researcher’s conclusions, it is suggested that the implementation of the abovementioned managerial and leadership practices is conducive to better creativity-related and productivity-associated outcomes and is feasible in the majority of companies. However, it is argued that Amabile’s model of organizational creativity can be successfully implemented only in those companies where the level of employees’ inherent capacity for creativity, their suitability to the organizational culture, and their relevant competence is sufficiently high.

Summary

The article is divided into four sections: definition of creativity in business, explanation of creativity management techniques, the depiction of real-life examples, and conclusion about potential rewards and risks linked to creative behaviors at the workplace. Amabile (1998) commences her discussion by noting that, unlike many fields of performance traditionally associated with creativity, such as painting and fiction writing, creative ideas in business should be not only original but also useful and actionable.

While the primary goal of businesses is to generate profit, the appropriateness of creative thinking should necessarily be taken into account. However, many managers often entirely discard the creative aspect of work in departments that deal with numbers, data, and strict regulations because they wrongly perceive creativity as solely an artistic endeavor. They do not understand that creative thinking “refers to how people approach problems and solutions —their capacity to put existing ideas together in new combinations” (Amabile 1998, para. 2). Therefore, it can be realized in any professional area and can significantly benefit employees and organizations by inducing innovation.

As for two other components of creativity – expertise, and motivation, – they are as essential as creative thinking and the overall approach of individuals to problem-solving. When defining expertise, Amabile (1998) cites the Nobel laureate, economist, and psychologist Herb Simon who referred to it as a “network of possible wanderings” (para. 2). The larger is one’s expertise or, in other words, knowledge base and intellectual capacity within one or several related fields, the more chances they have to come up with an unconventional solution to a problem. Lastly, motivation can be regarded as a person’s determination and drive to engage in a certain activity.

According to Amabile (1998), it can be intrinsic and extrinsic. While the latter implies stimulation through rewards and punishments, the former is associated with individuals’ passion and inherent interest in any endeavor they want to accomplish. As stated by Amabile (1998), it is the intrinsic motivation that determines employees’ creativity at the workplace most and, therefore, managers should focus on promoting it by creating favorable organizational environments.

The author provides a list of managerial practices that can be used to foster creativity by boosting internal motivation. Noteworthily, Amabile (1998) composed this list based on evidence collected during “more than two decades of research focused primarily on one question: What are the links between work environment and creativity?” (para. 3). When conducting those studies, the researcher and her colleagues utilized a great variety of methodologies, including experiments, interviews, and surveys, that allowed gathering and examining both qualitative and quantitative data, establishing causal links between practices and outcomes, and getting insight into employees’ perceptions of creativity-related phenomena in multiple firms (Amabile 1998).

Overall, Amabile (1998) distinguishes six categories of practices: “challenge, freedom, resources, work-group features, supervisory encouragement, and organizational support” (para. 3). The first one refers to the matching of employees with tasks. To stimulate creativity, activity should be neither too simple nor too difficult. To match workers with tasks perfectly, managers should know their employees well and, in Amabile’s (1998) opinion, it is the biggest challenge.

At the same time, freedom refers to the level of workplace autonomy and the extent to which workers are allowed to choose how to approach their tasks. However, when letting employees work freely, it is important to formulate and communicate clear objectives and goals, otherwise, results may be counterproductive (Amabile 1998). Besides, the right balance should be preserved when allocating time and other resources needed to complete a task. For example, when deadlines are too loose or too tight, creativity suffers because “the former create distrust and the latter cause burnout” (Amabile 1998, para. 3). Without adequate allocation of resources, individuals’ freedom to act creatively may be compromised.

When promoting creativity at the workplace, it is also essential to create effective teams in which workers would challenge each other, support and encourage unconventional ideas, and contribute to their generation. For Amabile (1998) diversity is one of the crucial features of effective and creativity-stimulating workgroups, whereas she notes that “homogeneous teams do little to enhance expertise and creative thinking” (Amabile 1998, para. 3).

Lastly, to encourage creativity and innovation, there must be sufficient support at both supervisory and organizational levels in organizations. Managers should acknowledge employees’ efforts and avoid harsh criticism. Moreover, firms must have corporate cultures that value creativity.

The effectiveness of all thee managerial practices are verified by Amabile (1998) in a large research project called the Team Events Study in which the researcher and her colleagues investigated seven enterprises operating within the high tech, consumer products, and chemical industries for two years. Besides analyzing the actual outcomes of projects in which employees in those organizations were involved, the researchers recorded perceptions and opinions of managers and their subordinates.

The example of one firm called by Amabile (1998) as Chemical Central demonstrates that when the environment is developed by the prescribed practices (freedom, resources, work-group features, and so forth) not only better output can be achieved but also greater creativity and job satisfaction. In this way, although creativity promotion may be challenging because it often requires substantial changes and investments, it is rewarding and beneficial in the long term. Conversely, a failure to support employees’ creative thinking and freedom of expression is associated with multiple risks as subordinates may become dissatisfied and their commitment to work can diminish.

Analysis

Theoretical Framework

Although Amabile (1998) does not state it explicitly, her work seems to be partially based on the principles of Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory. Following this theory, employees’ attitudes to work and their level of performance as such are determined by motivators and hygiene factors. The former are intrinsic factors, such as interest in work and self-improvement, and they are correlated with job satisfaction and quality of work (Kian & Yusof 2015).

The latter are extrinsic factors, such as monetary rewards and the overall workplace conditions, and their primary role is considered to be the prevention of employees’ dissatisfaction (Kian & Yusof 2015). In other words, in Herzberg’s perspective, a full supply of favorable external factors is not sufficient to foster individuals’ growth and excellent performance as they are entirely defined by internal motivators.

It means Herzberg considers that hygiene factors and intrinsic motivators are independent of each other. At the same time, Amabile (1998) claims that external factors can affect intrinsic factors about creative expression. For instance, she notes that supervisory encouragement through constructive communication with the team motivates employees to be creative, while criticism discourages them.

However, it is possible to say that the improvement of external factors will not lead to desired outcomes in case an employee lacks two other core components of creativity – competence and creative thinking skills. It seems this problem is not sufficiently addressed in the selected article. It is clear that while creating a supportive workplace environment, managers should also invest in staff training and education to accelerate the achievement of positive changes in employee behaviors and make them more confident about their creative skills.

Moreover, the modification of the organizational environment will not help if subordinates are not interested in their job in general. Though this factor is linked to the area of human resource management more than to innovation management and leadership, it indicates that effective hiring practices are an essential prerequisite for boosting the level of creativity in the organization.

Evaluation of Research Findings

In the article, Amabile (1998) does not provide a detailed explanation of methods and analysis processes she utilized in her previous studies and merely gives a summary of data collection tools. Therefore, it is hard to assess the reliability of her findings and conclusions based on the information from the selected piece. However, their trustworthiness can be evaluated through comparison with observations made by other researchers.

For example, in their article, Ryan and Deci (2000) provide a recap of major findings reported in a plethora of studies and reveal that tangible rewards, as well as deadlines, excess competition, and directiveness, undermine intrinsic motivation, whereas freedom to perform following personal preferences enhances it. These statements match with those made by Amabile (1998) in her article. For instance, she claims that autonomy concerning the means is key to intrinsic motivation and creativity, while negativity about individuals’ ideas expressed by other employees and managers undermines motivation.

As stated by Dewett (2007), when developing her theory, Amabile herself extensively derived evidence from the work by Deci, Ryan, and other researchers in the field of organizational creativity and management. At the same time, many scholars mention and use Amabile’s works in their studies as well. For example, Zhang and Gheibi (2015) refer to Amabile when defining creativity and motivation, and utilize the evidence from her studies as a basis for the development of their theory.

Zhang and Gheibi (2015) agree with Amabile’s observations that “a confluence of all components in and outside of the individuals” is key to greater creativity (p. 381). However, they expand her model by including knowledge integration or “individual self-efficacy in combining knowledge from different sources” and psychological safety as important triggers of creative behaviors as well (Zhang & Gheib 2015, p. 387). In this way, their conclusions point at limitations of Amabile’s theory because she focuses primarily on the factor of motivation and does not illustrate sufficiently how employees use cognitive processes in creative endeavors and how these processes are interrelated with intrinsic motivation.

Practical Implications

Despite identified limitations, it is possible to say that the author fulfills the objectives formulated at the beginning of the article successfully. Amabile (1998) explains which managerial practices help build creative enterprises and which may kill creativity. Besides summarizing evidence from her previous studies, she draws a real-life example that illustrates her stance. Amabile (1998) writes that when Procter & Gamble (P&G) experienced a decline in product innovations, it made some structural and cultural changes: established cross-sectional teams and provided employees with an opportunity to select tasks while given a clear and challenging strategic goal.

As a result, P&G managed to drastically increase the level of organizational creativity and produce several innovative and highly profitable products (Amabile 1998). Overall, this example demonstrates that managerial practices described by Amabile (1998) can be applied even in large corporations although they are traditionally characterized by excessively formalized work structures and architectures and a relatively small level of flexibility.

To illustrate links between employee autonomy, effective team composition, constructive communication patterns, managerial support, and overall corporate culture oriented towards innovativeness, it is also possible to draw an example of Google. The company has a culture that emphasizes the importance of risk-taking, flexibility, and cooperation (University of Minnesota n.d.). Workers at Google make decisions in teams, and, in the engineering department, employees are encouraged to spend 20% of the working time on the elaboration of their ideas (University of Minnesota n.d.).

It is worth noticing that the company also pays a lot of attention to hiring the right people who are suitable for its overall aspirations and can keep up with its values. For this reason, when recruiting people, Google evaluates not only the intellectual capabilities of candidates but also their creative capacities (University of Minnesota n.d.). As a result of such a unique culture and efficient managerial practices, Google can be regarded as one of the most innovative and competitive enterprises in the world.

Conclusion

The findings of the critical analysis made it clear that motivation is one of the major components of creativity and it can be influenced through various practices aimed at the creation of supportive and psychologically safe environments in firms.

Overall, Amabile (1998) successfully demonstrated that changes in task and resource allocation, employee autonomy, supervision, communication, and so forth can boost organizational creativity, and the fact that she based her conclusions on findings from numerous empirical studies can be considered a sign of their trustworthiness. Besides, her statements are consistent with evidence acquired by other researchers.

Nevertheless, the overemphasis on the role of internal motivation in creative processes may be regarded as a limitation. Amabile (1998) briefly states that expertise and critical thinking skills are important elements of creativity as well and noted that managers should invest in staff training. However, it is valid to say that the role of these components of creativity is slightly underrated in the reviewed article. While a worker may improve expertise and creative thinking over time inappropriate organizational environments, it is possible to say that such an outcome is achievable only if they are willing to commit to the organization and its culture.

Thus, it seems that creative thinking capabilities, competence, and the extent to which employees match with organizational values, mission, and vision are important variables determining the overall success of creative endeavors in companies along with internal motivation. Further research of links between all these variables is needed to shed more light on the roles of intrinsic and extrinsic factors in boosting employee creativity.

Reference List

Amabile, T M 1998, ‘How to kill creativity.’ Harvard Business Review. Web.

Dewett, T 2007, ‘Linking intrinsic motivation, risk taking, and employee creativity in an R&D environment’, R&D Management, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 197-208.

Kian, T S & Yusoff, W F W 2015, ‘Intrinsic-extrinsic motivation revisited: exploring their definitions’, International Journal of Management Sciences, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 136-140.

Ryan, R M & Deci, E L 2000, ‘Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: classic definitions and new directions’, Contemporary Educational Psychology, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 54-67.

University of Minnesota n.d., Case in point: Google creates unique culture. Web.

Zhang, P & Gheibi, S 2015, ‘From intrinsic motivation to employee creativity: the role of knowledge integration and team psychological safety’, European Scientific Journal, vol. 11, no. 11, pp. 380-392.