Table of Contents

Introduction

Background

2-3

Research Questions
Hypothesis
Research Methodology

4
4-5
4

Data Presentation & Analysis

5-15

Summary of Research Findings

15

Recommendations
Conclusion
Reference List

16-17
17
18-20

Introduction
In our period of open economy, an organization today not only does business in their mother
country but also operates in different countries. Today the market place is not limited to a certain
geographical location, rather it is global. To compete in this global market place, organizations
continuously requires providing goods and services in more efficient and unique manner. In this
quest, an organization needs employees who can find to do things that other organization cannot.
To accomplish that, an organization wants to have a pool employee with creative and innovative
ideas. However, I wonder how far organization will usually accept creativity form their
employees.
The focus of my research will be to what extent organization accepts creativity from its
employees. Creative organizations enjoy competitive edge over its competitors. So to operate
and excel in the market place an organization needs to continuously come up with novel and
creative ideas that are marketable. Employees are the ones who govern an organization. Their
accumulated creativity shapes organizational creativity. So an organization continuously
promotes and encourages its employees to come up with new ideas to do new things or to do
existing things in a new and more efficient way.

Background:
An organization's basic orientation to creativity is related to the organizational culture
(Hauser, 1998). Adhocracy organization culture is that when organizations stress innovation,
adaptation, growth, and resource acquisition. Managerial communications within this quadrant
are transformational in orientation and focus on stimulating change (Cameron, Quinn, & Tromp,
1999). On the other hand, stable hierarchical organizational culture stress documentation,
2

information management, stability, and control. Interpersonal relations here are marked by
relatively low levels of trust, morale, and leader credibility (Zammuto & Krakower, 1991).
According to Claver, Llopis, Garcia, and Molina (1998), the ideal profile for creativity is an
adhocracy. Adhocracies foster creativity because they adapt to the environment (Cameron and
Quinn, 1999). Bertrams (1999) states that an adhocracy is excellent for innovation because
people are motivated to learn, experiment, and take risks. Accordingly, Nystrom (1990) found
that organizational divisions with cultures reflecting challenge and risk-taking were more
innovative. Brand (1998) showed that an innovative culture stimulates creativity, whereas a
controlling culture, organization that stress documentation, information management, stability
and control, hinders creativity.
A salient characteristic of the organizational context that is often considered a potent
determinant of employee creativity at work is style of supervision (Amabile & Gryskiewicz,
1987, 1989; Deci & Ryan, 1987; West & Farr, 1989). In particular, supervision that is supportive
of employees is expected to enhance creative achievement; supervision that is controlling or
limiting is expected to diminish creative performance (Deci et al., 1989; Deci & Ryan, 1985,
1987). When supervisors are supportive, they show concern for employees' feelings and needs,
encourage them to voice their own concerns, provide positive, chiefly informational feedback,
and facilitate employee skill development (Deci & Ryan, 1987). These actions on the part of a
supervisor are expected to promote employees' feelings of self-determination and personal
initiative at work, which should then boost levels of interest in work activities and enhance
creative achievement. In contrast, when supervisors are controlling, they closely monitor
employee behavior, make decisions without employee involvement, provide feedback in a
controlling manner, and generally pressure employees to think, feel, or behave in certain ways
3

(Deci et al., 1989). Supervision that is experienced as controlling undermines intrinsic

motivation and shifts an employee's focus of attention away from work activities and toward
external concerns (Deci et al., 1989; Deci & Ryan, 1987). This reduction in intrinsic motivation
is then expected to lower creative performance.
These results are in line with the findings of several studies (Bertrams, 1999; Pelz &
Andrews, 1996; Poalillo & Brown, 1978) which showed that creativity is fostered when
individuals and teams have a relatively high level of autonomy in the day-to-day conduct of their
work and a sense of ownership and control over their work and ideas.
The effect of participation may be explained through intrinsic task motivation: the desire to
work on something because it is interesting, involving, exciting, satisfying, or personally
challenging. Fried and Ferris (1997) showed in their meta-analysis that autonomy is strongly
related to internal work motivation. This motivational component is what turns creative potential
into creative ideas (Amabile, 1997).
Research has demonstrated relationships between employee creativity and high autonomy,
skill variety, feedback, freedom, and challenging work (Amabile & Gryskiewicz, 1989; Oldham
& Cummings, 1996). In addition to affecting creativity, job characteristics can also affect
employee motivation. Meaningfulness of the work, responsibility for the outcomes, and
knowledge of the work results all contribute to high internal motivation (Hackman & Oldham,
1975).

Research Question:
Through my research I am aiming to explore about what creativity means in an organizational
setting and the extent to which an organization supports creativity from their employees.
Through my research I hope to answers to the following questions
1.
2.
3.
4.

What is creativity?
What does creativity imply in an organization setting?
Why does an organization need creative employees?
How does managements monitoring, supervision and motivation affect employee

creativity?
5. How does an organizations culture relate to creativity?
6. How does an organizations procedural justice encourage employees creativity?
7. What do new employees perceive about their organizations support to them to be
creative?

Hypothesis:
In my research, I want to find that though an organization promotes and encourages its new
employees to be creative, they constrain their creativity to a certain degree. I expect to find that
organization do not constantly encourage creativity form its new employees. They mostly prefer
new employees to carry out their orders given by their supervisors.

Research Methodology:
For my primary research, I would like to conduct a survey on a sample of employees in a
particular organization. In particular, my sample will include employees form organizations.
Hence I will design a questionnaire with different types of questions, so as to attain the useful
data that will help me answer my questions. Besides, I would also interview two business school
teachers who regularly teach organization creativity in university.
5

For my secondary research I plan to use the resources of the web- articles, blogs, journals,
databases, government statistics, academic websites, social media sites and other media

Data Presentation and Analysis

14
12
10
8
6
Axis Title 4
2
0

How much autonomy and freedom do you recive in carrying out your work?
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0

How often are you motivated to be creative in your work?

Exhibit: Employee motivation and creativity.

Managements motivation at work place has a positive impact on employees creative
performance in an organizational setting. Besides, autonomy and freedom to carry out ones one
work indirectly motivates employee and which in turn empower employees to do work in
different and efficient way. So, to measure the overall motivation of the new employees, I used
these two questions to measure to what extent organization emphasize new employees
motivation.
When new employees were asked to define the level of motivation that they receive from
their managers to be creative in their work, most of them think they receive some sort of
motivation form the manager. However, only 11% of them receive no motivation at all and

majority receives sometimes and moderately often. Besides, when they were asked about how
autonomy and freedom they receive in carrying out their work, none received a great deal of
freedom and autonomy at all and only approximately 6.67% receives no freedom and autonomy
at all. However, the rest received some degree of freedom and autonomy to carry out their works.
When the responses were seen from the prospective of both male and female, on an average, they
all received a moderate amount of motivation to do creative works and freedom and autonomy to
carry out their works.
Since the data suggest that employee thinks, on an average, they are moderately motivated to
creative work, I can then imply that an organization expects moderate level of creativity form its
new employees.

How do you define your manager's supervision? How often your work is monitored by your manager?
Not at All
Sometimes
Supportive Supervision; 37%
Controlling Supervision; 63%

Moderatlely Often
Very often
Always
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

Exhibit: Management supervision and creativity

To measure supervisory support and control, I used to two questions. One is how do new
employees define their managers management style is to be, and the other is how often their
work is monitored by the managers.
To answer what is their managers management style, new employees were asked to choose
between supportive management style and controlling management style. Supportive
management style enhances new employees creative performance, whereas controlling
management style hinders new employees creative process. On the other hand, new employees
were asked to choose among always, very often, moderately often, sometimes and not at all to
answer how often their work is monitored. Employees whose work is constantly monitored
severely curtail creative thinking, as employees would begin to act and then think in response to
the unseen outcome.
Out of my 30 respondents, approximately 60% of them experienced controlling supervision
and the rest perceived it to be supportive supervision. However, when they were asked about,
how often their works get monitored by the managers, all 30 of them experienced so degree of
monitoring by their supervision. Moreover, when I analyzed the data form the prospective of
both male and female, I noticed that a higher proportion of both the male and female respondents
replied that their managers management style is controlling as opposed to supportive
supervision style.
Our data suggests that new employees on an average find their managers to be controlling
instead of being supportive. However, an important observation is that still a good proportion of
new employees still consider their managers to be supportive. On the other hand, though a good
proportion of the new employees replied that they experience constant monitoring, on an average

their work is moderately monitored. So form the data, I can conclude that an organization
expects a moderate level of creativity form its new employees.

Exhibit: Organization culture and creativity.

To measure the organization culture, I used 3 questions. Frist of all, I collected information to
find what employee thinks about their organization culture to be. Secondly, I wanted to see
whether the organization culture is participative in goal setting, making decision and appraising
results or not and at the same time I also gathered information regarding how much freedom new
employees get in expressing their opinions. Finally, I also asked employees to rate how satisfied
they were with the organizational procedural justice. All these three questions were asked to new
employees to measure whether the prevailing organizational culture supports or curtails new
employees creativity.
New employees were asked to choose whether their organization motivates them to learn,
experiment, and take risk, or emphasize openness, commitment, trust and morale, or emphasize
documentation, information management, stability and control or emphasize goal clarity,
productivity and accomplishment. Organization culture that emphasizes openness, commitment,
trust and morale is more suitable to foster creativity within the organization. However,
9

organizational culture the emphasize documentation, information management, stability and

control demotivates employee to be creative in their works.
The pie charts shows that most of the respondent think that their organization emphasize on
documentation, information management, stability and control. Approximately 45% of them
think so, whereas only 20% of the respondents believe that their organization emphasize
openness, commitment, trust and morale. Only the other 35% respondent thinks that their
organization either emphasizes goal clarity, productivity and accomplishment or motivates them
to learn experiment and take risk.
Moreover, when employees were asked how positive their senior managers are in sharing
knowledge with them, 50% of them thinks that senior managers are slightly positive in case of
sharing working knowledge.
Besides, when they were asked about how participative their organization is in respect of goal
setting, making decision and appraising results, then again majority thinks that the organizations
are moderately participative.
Furthermore, most of the new employees received a moderate amount of freedom in
expressing their own opinions in the organization and they were also slightly satisfied with the
prevailing organizational culture.
So form the data, it can be inferred that most of the new employees thinks that their
organization emphasize documentation, information management, stability and control instead of
openness, commitment, trust and morale.

10

How satisfied are you with your career? How challenging is your job?
Extremly Satisfied; 7%
Extremly dissatisfied;Slightly
17% Satisfied; 33%
Slightly dissatisfied; 27%
Neither Satisfied nor dissatisfied; 17%

challenging;
Not at all Very
challenging;
17% 13%

Slightly challenging; 23%

Moderately challenging; 47%

Exhibit: Career satisfaction and creativity.

Career satisfaction and employees creative performance is positively correlated. So, to
understand how satisfied new employees are with their career, I asked them to rate among
extremely satisfied, slightly satisfied, neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, slightly dissatisfied, and
extremely dissatisfied. If employees fell satisfied then they have incentive to be creative,
whereas if they are dissatisfied then it hinders their creative performance.
When new employees were asked about how satisfied they are with their career, 40% of them
thinks that they are satisfied, approximately 43% is dissatisfied and 17% are neither satisfied nor
dissatisfied. However, 16% of my respondents were extremely dissatisfied and only 6% were
extremely satisfied.
So from the data, I see that approximately equal proportion of employees is satisfied and
dissatisfied. So, form it I can infer that organization prefers moderate level of new employees
creativity.

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Challenging jobs increases employees career satisfaction. So to see how challenging new
employees think their job is to be, I asked them to choose among very challenging, moderately
challenging, slightly challenging, and not at all challenging. If they think their job to be very
challenging then it will positively affect their career satisfaction and thus will positively impact
their creative behavior.
Out of my 30 respondents only 17% of them think that their work is not at all challenging and
the rest 83% thinks their job to be challenging to some extent. However, majority of them
approximately 70% thinks that the work they currently do is moderately and slightly challenging.
Only 15% thinks that their work to be very challenging.
Since most of the respondent thinks that their works to be moderately challenging, it can be
infer that employees are moderately satisfied with their career. Thus their moderate career
satisfaction suggests that organization puts moderate emphasis on new employees career
satisfaction. So, it can be concurred that an organization accepts moderate level of creativity
form new employees.

Secondary Research:
The following is an in-depth the interview of Boby Hajaj, Lecturer North South University
What does creativity imply in an organizational context?
Answer: Creativity has broader implication in an organization, and it is quite very difficult to
generalize in an organizational context. However, the need for creativity varies from industry to
industry. Sad but true that public sectors in our country put less emphasis on creativity. However,
private sectors seem to be putting much more emphasis on creativity than before. Implication of
12

creativity differs due to organization culture and industry. It also has different implication for
skilled and semi-skilled workers. An organization that wants growth puts much more emphasis
on creativity than any other organization. My personal opinion to this question is that
organizational creativity is the sum total of its individual employees creativity.
Why is employees creativity so important for an organization?
Answer: Employees are the ones who govern an organization. An organization is run and
controlled by its employees. So, in order for an organization to be creative in what it does, its
employees have to be creative in what they do. Time demands that an organization needs to
grow, and for the growth of an organization there is no other alternative other than creativity and
innovation. So that is why employees creativity is very important for an organization.
What significant role new employees have in organizational creativity?
Answer: It again depends on industry to industry, for example and technological firm will
demand high level of creativity. Though it is very difficult to say what significant role they have
in organizational creativity, organization cannot ignore or defy their contribution in any way.
Actually when it is about creativity, it can come from anyone one in anytime.
What do you think how far an organization accepts creativity form its new employees?
Answer: In the current context, an organization happens to put less emphasis on new
employees. However, in marketing sections employers happen to give high level of importance
on new employees creativity.
The following is a comprehensive interview with Neaz Patwary, Lecturer North South
University
13

What does creativity imply in an organizational context?

Answer: Creativity implies different things in different works. It is different from job to job,
culture to culture, organization to organization. In our county, creativity is now welcomed form
the root level employees. However, there are few jobs where creativity is not only welcomed but
also expected. If it is a new organization then this might be different. Creativity also depends on
the key stakeholders. Since it is related to change management, top level employees role matters.
If it is a small organization, then it completely depends on the owner. It is also embedded on the
history and context of the organization.
Why is employees creativity so important for an organization?
Answer: Creativity has become the agent of change for an organization. It is now the key
engine for organizational growth. Creativity provides an organization a unique advantage in the
market place. It has no alternative for an organizations survival and growth.
What significant role new employees have in organizational creativity?
Answer: Creativity is something that might come from anyone else in the organization. None
can tell that or no research suggest that senior members of the organization is highly creative.
However, if you look at the current trend, technological sector where employee creativity is
considered as oxygen they are hiring more new young people in their organization. So off course,
new employees have greater significant role in organizational creativity.
What do you think how far an organization accepts creativity form its new employees?
Answer: It again depend on which types of organization in our country. If you consider
Private Corporation, then they have higher emphasis on employee creativity. However, in public
14

corporations the support for new employee creativity is very minimal. However, the good thing
is that things have changed a lot in our country, in terms of employees creativity. I am optimist
that our organization in future will put more emphasis on new employees creativity.

Summary of Research Finding

Hence after analyzing the results of my surveys I can see the following trend
On an average, new employees work is moderately often monitored by the managers.
Though a greater proportion of new employees work under controlling supervision,
supportive supervision by managers is increasing for new employees.
On an average, new employees are moderately often motivated by their managers to be
creative in their work.
Moreover, new employees also receive moderate amount of autonomy and freedom in
carrying out their respective works.
Senior colleagues mostly slightly positive in sharing working knowledge with new
employees.
However, new employees works are mostly focused on documentation, information
management, stability and control.
New employees are also given moderate level of participation in organization goal

setting, decision making, and appraising result.

They also get a moderate amount of freedom to express their own opinion.
New employees are also slightly satisfied with the organizations procedural justice.
A higher proportion of the new employees are also slightly satisfied with their career.
New employees also think the work they do is slightly challenging.

Looking back at my hypothesis which stated that organizations do not constantly encourage
creativity from its new employees, and they prefer new those new employees to carry out their
managers orders. I can now see infer form the data that my hypothesis is not completely
satisfied, but it does partially match with my hypothesis

15

Recommendation:
Firestein (1996) illustrate creativity as an essential weapon for any organization: Creativity is
a strategic business weapon. The organizations that will survive and thrive in the twenty first
century will not be the ones with the deepest pockets, but the ones that can unleash and apply the
creativity of their workplace (p.13). S, it keeps no doubt that employee creativity is an asset for
an organization, and organizations need to build and give opportunity to every employee be
creative in their works. My suggestion in this regard would be:

An organization to develop a formalized creativity program for new employees.

An organization to establish a creativity department or have creativity trained specialists.
Management should be supportive in supervising new employees.
An organization should constantly motivates and provide incentives to new employees to

be creative at their work.

New employees should be given an acceptable autonomy and freedom to carry out their
work.
Senior management should be encouraged to be more positive in knowledge sharing.
An organization should emphasize openness, commitment, trust and morale.
An organization should be more participative for new employees in goal setting, making
decision, and appraising result.
New employees to be given challenging jobs and focus should be given on their career
satisfaction.

Conclusion:
In conclusion, this study shows that an organization accepts a moderate level of creativity
form it new employees. Though the sample size was too small to provide any significant
statistical result, we can generalize form our given analysis that an organization has a long way
to go to improve their organizational setting to encourage and improve new employee creative

16

performance at work. Organizations in the developed countries have higher implication to

explore new employees creativity. As a developing country, our performance is not too bad, nut
our organizations have to fully understand the value of new employees creativity and properly
implement for their organizations.

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