TITLE

HOW DOES BUREAUCRACY IMPACT INDIVIDUAL CREATIVITY? A CROSS-LEVEL INVESTIGATION OF TEAM CONTEXTUAL INFLUENCES ON GOAL ORIENTATION-CREATIVITY RELATIONSHIPS

AUTHOR(S)

Hirst, Giles; Van Knippenberg, Daan; Chin-Hui Chen; Sacramento, Claudia A.

PUB. DATE

June 2011

SOURCE

Academy of Management Journal;Jun2011, Vol. 54 Issue 3, p624

SOURCE TYPE

Academic Journal

DOC. TYPE

Article

ABSTRACT

Offering important counterpoint to work identifying team influences stimulating creative expression of individual differences in goal orientation, we develop cross-level theory establishing that team bureaucratic practices (centralization and formalization) constrain creative expression. Speaking to the tension between bureaucracy and creativity, findings indicate that this influence is not only negative and that effects of centralization and formalization differ. Surveying 330 employees in 95 teams at the Taiwan Customs Bureau, we found that learning and "performance avoid" goal orientations had, respectively, stronger positive and weaker negative relationships with creativity under low centralization. A "performance-prove" orientation was positively related to creativity under low formalization.

ACCESSION #

61968124

Tags: BUREAUCRACY;  CREATIVE ability;  DECENTRALIZATION in management;  FORMALIZATION (Philosophy);  CUSTOMS administration;  TEAMS in the workplace

 

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