“Going out” of the box: Close intercultural friendships and romantic relationships spark creativity, workplace innovation, and entrepreneurship.

Abstract

The present research investigates whether close intercultural relationships promote creativity, workplace innovation, and entrepreneurship-outcomes vital to individual and organizational success. We triangulate on these questions with multiple methods (longitudinal, experimental, and field studies), diverse population samples (MBA students, employees, and professional repatriates), and both laboratory and real-world measures. Using a longitudinal design over a 10-month MBA program, Study 1 found that intercultural dating predicted improved creative performance on both divergent and convergent thinking tasks. Using an experimental design, Study 2 established the causal connection between intercultural dating and creativity: Among participants who had previously had both intercultural and intracultural dating experiences, those who reflected on an intercultural dating experience displayed higher creativity compared to those who reflected on an intracultural dating experience. Importantly, cultural learning mediated this effect. Extending the first 2 studies, Study 3 revealed that the duration of past intercultural romantic relationships positively predicted the ability of current employees to generate creative names for marketing products, but the number of past intercultural romantic partners did not. In Study 4, we analyzed an original dataset of 2,226 professional repatriates from 96 countries who had previously worked in the U.S. under J-1 visas: Participants' frequency of contact with American friends since returning to their home countries positively predicted their workplace innovation and likelihood of becoming entrepreneurs. Going out with a close friend or romantic partner from a foreign culture can help people "go out" of the box and into a creative frame of mind. (PsycINFO Database Record

Relationally Charged: How and When Workplace Friendship Facilitates Employee Interpersonal Citizenship

“…In addition, social contagion between friends is particularly salient, providing a potential mechanism in which human energy can be transmitted through social interactions (Hatfield et al, 1994;Owens et al, 2016). For example, studies have shown that working alongside friends can engender happiness and positive affect (Sias and Cahill, 1998;Lu et al, 2017). Sense of meaning can also be derived from workplace friendship (Rawlins, 1992), and is closely related to energy (Fritz et al, 2011).…”

“…Workplace friendship describes the quality of interpersonal relationship between individuals in the workplace where the relationship is characterized by mutual trust, commitment, reciprocal liking, and shared interests or values, which are driven by communal norms and socioemotional goals (Berman et al, 2002;Pillemer and Rothbard, 2018). Organizational research has found workplace friendship to have positive influences on both the employees and organization such as enhanced job significance , team-member exchange (Tse et al, 2008), well-being (Craig and Kuykendall, 2019), and innovation (Lu et al, 2017).…”

“…Indeed, having friends at work not only can enrich and bring joy to an employee's organizational life (Rawlins, 1992;Sias and Cahill, 1998), but also can enable one to achieve a more successful career (e.g., Winstead et al, 1995;Ingram and Zou, 2008;Mao et al, 2012;Liu et al, 2013;Methot et al, 2016;Lu et al, 2017). Existing studies have found that workplace friendship can facilitate an individual's psychological and behavioral responses by enhancing one's affective experiences, such as happiness, excitement, trustworthiness, joy, and sympathy (e.g., Liu et al, 2013;Methot et al, 2016;Lu et al, 2017). Since friendship often elicits many of these positive emotions simultaneously, solely focusing on one particular emotion may not provide sufficient knowledge to understand the full picture of the positive influences of workplace friendship (Wright, 1984;Sias and Cahill, 1998;Ingram and Zou, 2008).…”

“…By testing these propositions in a time-lagged multisource study, our investigation of the impacts of workplace friendship through the lens of COR theory offers several contributions to the literature. First, instead of examining specific emotions in facilitating work-related outcomes of workplace friendship, our research differs from previous studies by focusing on the accumulation of positive emotions as a source of energy that motivates an employee's interpersonal behavior (e.g., Winstead et al, 1995;Methot et al, 2016;Lu et al, 2017). In doing so, we approach from a different perspective and enhance understanding on the consequences of workplace friendship.…”

Globalization: Current Issues and Future Research Directions

“…At the psychological level, the main benefits of globalization currently point to positive effects of global exposure on specific skills like creativity (Godart, Maddux, Shipilov, & Galinsky, 2015;Leung & Chiu, 2010;Leung, Maddux, Galinsky, & Chiu, 2008;Lu, Hafenbrack, et al, 2017;Maddux & Galinsky, 2009;Maddux, Hafenbrack, Tadmor, Bivolaru, & Galinsky, 2014;Tadmor, Galinsky, & Maddux, 2012). For example, research shows that people who have experience living or working in foreign countries are more creative than people without such experiences (Godart et al, 2015;Maddux & Galinsky, 2009).…”