Browsing by Author "Shaw, Amy (Ting Xiao)"

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    The Effects of Time and Material Constraints on Creativity
    (2017-11-30) Shaw, Amy (Ting Xiao); Beier, Margaret E
    In this era of intense competition and constantly changing business world, organizations rely on creativity from employees to innovate, adapt, survive, and succeed (Grant, 2011). Consequently, managers pay great attention to stimulants and obstacles to creativity in the workplace and try to provide favorable conditions that foster creativity (Anderson, Potočnik, & Zhou, 2014; Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004). Among an array of environmental factors, constraint, defined as a state of lacking resources or being limited, is often discussed theoretically but understudied empirically (Rosso, 2011). Modern organizations are often faced with constraints in time, money, technology, and materials that seemingly hinder their capability to create. Researchers and practitioners have wondered how, given the various constraints they face on the job, people working on new product development (NPD) projects are able to design creative products (Andriopoulos & Lewis, 2010). The dominant view in the literature is that constraint negatively affects creativity by inhibiting intrinsic motivation (Amabile, 1996), but some studies also found evidence to the contrary, suggesting that if managed in the right way, constraint may positively affect creativity (e.g., Andrews & Farris, 1972; Baer & Oldham, 2006; Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). The limited and inconsistent empirical findings suggest the lack of a clear understanding of how exactly different types of constraints affect creativity, underscoring the need for further investigation into specific conditions where creativity is positively or negatively impacted by constraints. This dissertation aims to expand the horizon of research on the effects of constraints on creativity by examining two specific types of constraints, time and material constraints, which often coexist in new product development processes but have not been examined simultaneously. Informed by the findings in Baer and Oldham (2006), I hypothesized that a moderate time constraint increases creativity per the activation theory (Gardner & Cummings, 1988) in Hypothesis 1, and that a moderate material constraint increases creativity because not having everything handy may stretch people to think creatively (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; Shalley & Gilson, 2004) in Hypothesis 2. In Hypothesis 3, I proposed an interaction between time and material constraints, that the presence of a moderate time constraint enlarges the creative performance difference between the moderate material constraint and no material constraint conditions (with creativity in the material constraint condition being higher), because abundant material resources under time constraint may distract creators from devoting their cognitive resources to the most important aspects of the work. Additionally, I explored the moderating role of Emotional Stability on the interactive effect of time and material constraints on creativity, because research has suggested that Emotional Stability could be activated by situations (Tett & Burnett, 2003) and interact with situational factors (e.g., time pressure) to affect creativity through the situation-induced anxiety (e.g., Liebert & Morris, 1967; Wine, 1980). Considering creativity in the context of new architectural product design, I utilized Minecraft (the Education Edition) as the platform where a simulated artifact design task is carried out to measure creativity. Given that Minecraft is rarely used in psychological experiments, I conducted a validation study (Study 1) to investigate the construct validity of the Minecraft task scores. Results based on a college student sample (N = 103) suggested that the Minecraft creativity scores had appropriate associations with external variables as well as extant measures of creativity, providing validity evidence to support the use of the Minecraft task for measuring creativity. In Study 2, I utilized the validated Minecraft task as the creativity task in a lab experiment, where I manipulated the time and material constraint conditions to test the effects of constraints on creativity. Results based on a college student sample (N = 156) revealed that time constraint did not affect creativity, but material constraint increased creativity. Moreover, there was an interaction between time and material constraints, supporting my hypothesis that the presence of a moderate time constraint enlarges the creativity difference between the moderate material constraint and no material constraint conditions. Post-hoc exploratory analyses also revealed that Emotional Stability moderated this two-way interaction, suggesting that a time constraint-abundant material condition was more detrimental to creativity for those with lower Emotional Stability. Study implications, limitations and future research directions are discussed.