Rewards and creative performance: A meta-analytic test of theoretically derived hypotheses.

Abstract

Although many scholars and practitioners are interested in understanding how to motivate individuals to be more creative, whether and how rewards affect creativity remain unclear. We argue that the conflicting evidence may be due to differences between studies in terms of reward conditions and the context in which rewards are offered. Specifically, we examine 5 potential moderators of the rewards-creative performance relationship: (a) the reward contingency, (b) the extent to which participants are provided information about their past or current creative performance, (c) the extent to which the reward and context offer choice or impose control, (d) the extent to which the context serves to enhance task engagement, and (e) the extent to which the performance tasks are complex. Using random-effects models, we meta-analyzed 60 experimental and nonexperimental studies (including 69 independent samples) that examined the rewards-creativity relationship with children or adults. Our results suggest that creativity-contingent rewards tend to increase creative performance-and are more positively related to creative performance when individuals are given more positive, contingent, and task-focused performance feedback and are provided more choice (and are less controlled). In contrast, performance-contingent or completion-contingent rewards tend to have a slight negative effect on creative performance.

The Effect of Monetary Reward on Creativity: The Role of Motivational Orientation

“…There is a prolonged debate about whether monetary rewards improve creative performance [20]. Presently, there are two schools of thought, based on self-determination theory (SDT) and learned industriousness theory (LIT), respectively [14,22]. With contradicting presumptions and logic, these two schools have opposite predictions with regard to the effect of monetary rewards on creativity.…”

“…One school is based on self-determination theory. SDT assumes that intrinsic motivation is crucial in determining performance and people try to meet their fundamental psychological needs such as selfdetermination and sense of competence [14]. Perceived self-determination is defined as "individuals' view that their behavior is self-initiated, self-regulated, and accompanied by feelings of freedom during task performance" [20].…”

The Effects of Performance Incentives and Creativity Training on Creative Problem-Solving Performance

“…9 Implications of this definition are that performance is measurable (in number of units or the degree of quality) and that high and 9 Engagement and completion dependent schemes are also found in the literature studying creativity (Byron & Khazanchi, 2012;Deci, Ryan, & Koestner, 1999). These schemes, however, do not adhere to my definition of performance incentives because rewards do not depend on the level of output.…”

“…16 Although some theories suggest that incentives would decrease intrinsic motivation by reducing individual self-determination (Ryan & Deci, 2000), empirical evidence often fails to show that performance incentives crowd out intrinsic motivation (Byron & Khazanchi, 2012;Deci et al, 1999;Gibbs et al, 2014). Supporters of the learned industriousness theory even predict and find that performance incentives increase intrinsic motivation (Eisenberger et al, 1999).…”

Filling up the HRM ‘Black Box’; do creativity and management philosophy matter?

“…Likewise, studies have established HRM-creativity interconnection (e.g. (Binyamin & Carmeli, 2010;Byron & Khananchi, 2012;Chang et al, 2014;Martinaityte, 2014); HRM-performance connection is pinned down too (e.g. Demirbag, et al, 2014;Fan, et al, 2014;Shin & Konrad, 2014).…”