The multiple ways of behaving creatively in the workplace: A typology and model

Abstract

Evidence in the literature suggests that employees can engage in other types of creative behavior at work beyond producing something new and useful for their organization. This paper seeks to advance our understanding of these "atypical" creative behaviors. We conceptualize a typology that encompasses both the commonly studied form of employee creativity (conventional steward-type) and three other types of employee creativity that have not been previously theorized (critical steward-type, cunning agent-type, and innocent agent-type). We then advance a conceptual model to identify situations that may lead employees to use their creative potential one way versus another. Further, we examine the different implications of these creative behaviors for the organization, employee, and society. Our conceptual framework provides a broader perspective of workplace creativity in which a wider range of behaviors, mechanisms, and outcomes must be considered. It provides new directions for future research as well as implications for managing creativity in different organizational and cultural contexts.

Customer Cooperation and Employee Innovation Behavior: The Roles of Creative Role Identity and Innovation Climates

“…In this study, we include innovation climate as a moderator in the process of creative role identity. Literature surrounding role identity has previously focused on the personalized and contextual ( Farmer et al, 2003 ; Yuan and Woodman, 2021 ) and it represents an intrinsic motivation for behaviors. This study extends these findings by taking organizational climate into consideration, and by combining both personal qualities and work environment factors.…”

When discordant work selves yield workplace creativity: The roles of creative process engagement and relational identification with the supervisor

“…Third, and relatedly, our findings show that relational identification is a guiding post that enables employees to constructively deviate from the goals of their organizations while they are generating new ideas. This contingency factor extends workplace creativity literature (Vadera, Pratt, & Mishra, 2013;Yuan & Woodman, 2021) such that having positive employee-supervisor relationships is critical for employees' creative process engagement to yield novel and useful ideas and ensure that such processes do not go awry.…”

The role of Creative Potential in the Project Management Process for the Implementation of the Company's Strategies

“…Thus, many researchers who study the differences between the existing approaches to the development of the creative potential of employees in enterprises note the numerous difficulties of implementing mechanisms for managing creative potential in enterprises, which, according to the authors, are caused by the following: the presence of well-thought-out development strategies only in large enterprises, the unstable financial condition of many enterprises, the high level of centralisation of the industrial enterprises' management and the concentration of all significant decisions in the hands of senior management, as well as the low efficiency of multidisciplinary services and the low level of their technical equipment. To reduce the negative effect of these problems on enterprises, that is necessary to introduce modern approaches to managing the development of creative potential (Yuan and Woodman, 2021;Alsafadi and Altahat, 2021;Rampa and Agogué, 2021;Ma, 2021;Biygautane et al, 2019).…”

“…The need to introduce mechanisms for managing the creative potential of employees in a modern enterprise is conditioned by the increased role of the human factor, which is one of the essential indicators of improving the organisation's efficiency. As proved by many other authors in their research, economically significant are not only the knowledge and experience of employees and also their creative abilities: imagination, adaptability, the flexibility of thinking, the ability to generate new ideas and solve non-standard tasks (Yuan and Woodman, 2021). In addition to that, the low level of innovative development of the enterprise determines the urgent need to use modern management methods of operating enterprises directly in their functioning.…”