Individual Creativity in the Workplace - Article Example

Article Review Summary of the main points of the article The article “Factors influencing individual creativity in the workplace: an examination of quantitative empirical research” by Toby Marshall Egan published in “Advances in Developing human resources” on May 2005, talks about the importance of individual creativity and the role of external influences on it. The article deals in the individual employee creativity and the influence of the external factors with the help of quantitative approach. The article discusses many major and minor points in this regard. The major points in the context of this article are as follows: Creativity is important to every organization and can solve any problem. The success of the organization depends a lot on the capacity of the employees to invent new things, solving problems and imparting new ideas. Creativity is influenced by many external factors, which can be measured and analyzed with the help of Quantitative empirical approaches. The main issues unraveled in individual creativity research are “General Personality, Big Five Personality and Self Perception” (Egan, 163). In addition to these factors, several other sub-factors also have an impact like “creativity goal setting, evaluation and feedback, teamwork, role models and leadership and supervision” (Egan, 164). The article also explores some minor points, which can be listed as follows: The Creative Personality Scale (CPS) is one of the most widely followed techniques in measuring individual creativity. The study found that creativity of a personality is enhanced by support from family members and peers. Some of the most important characteristics associated with creativity are curiosity, flexibility, openness to change, unconventional ideas and imaginativeness. Creativity of an individual is influenced by the job satisfaction and pleasures he derives from work. Setting up goals and aims by the higher management and motivating the employees through rewards can help in driving creativity. The system of evaluation and feedback can negatively affect the creativity of the employees. This curbs the natural instincts of the employees to improvise or rendering new ideas and hence creativity is negatively affected. The presence of a role model can drive creativity in an individual. Strong leadership and the ability to motivate can increase the level of creativity among the employees. (Egan) Becoming an effective leader The article dwells on individual creativity and the external factors influencing it. It forms a detailed study in understanding the creativity of the employees. Creativity is driven by many influential factors. It has to be kept in mind that creativity makes people more inclined towards work and drives them to work that much harder. A true leader will encourage creativity among the employees and thus will help in increasing the productivity of the organization. The article provides a detailed study on the external factors influencing creativity. To be an effective leader one has to keep an account of the external factors, as this would help to increase the creativeness of the employees. As we can infer from the article, satisfaction of the jobs is very essential in increasing the creativity of an employee. The job fulfillment of an entity relies upon the individual perception of the jobs. Therefore, it is very essential to choose the right kind of personnel for the job. If the employee is not satisfied with the job specifications, he may not be influenced to put in much effort into it. An individual with a high creative bent of mind must be encouraged in jobs of high creative work. This will help in increasing the productivity of the organization. Another very important point, which influences the creativity among the employees, is setting up goals. Goals are set up in every company for their appraisal of performance. But, goals are to be set up for attaining a level of creativity. The top-level management offers rewards for persons attaining the goals. It is the duty of the leader to motivate the employees to work towards their goal. Leaders should be motivational inspiring the employees to be creative. He should be charismatic and intelligent enough to understand the nuances of the activity and be attaining to every individual. In a nutshell, the transformational leadership will help in encouraging creativity in the employees. In addition to this, the employees should be provided with security in the workplace in terms of job and money. Conservation tactics help the employees to freely use their creativity in work. Conscientious behavior is detrimental to creative thinking in the workplace. This type of behavior leads to extremely dedicated and disciplined individuals in the workplace. People with a creative mind think about a problem differently from the conscientious people. These characteristics tell the very basic nature of the creative people and the externalities, which influence them. Learning about them will help a person to become a very good leader, as he will be able to motivate people to be creative and work hard. Reaction to the article The article deals on a very important issue of the modern world- creativity. Organizations the world over is driving their employees to achieve their goals of higher sales and revenue. However, the high sales growth and revenue comes only when the companies turn to think differently from their peers and offer the customers something different. To offer different products to the customers the companies have to be creative and constantly improve upon their products. This would be only achieved when the organizations urge their employees to be creative. The article gives us a detailed view of creativity and the factors influencing it. If the factors are controlled then the organizations can enhance the creativity in the mind of employees. This would help the institutions in the long run. The article provides a very detailed description of the factors, which influence creativity among the employees. The concept of self-perception about jobs is very important for driving creativity among the employees. If the employees are happy with the work provided to them they will be more encouraged to perform it better. The chances are more in these cases for employees to offer their views and add important notifications about the job. The presence of role models in the job is a positive influence on the employees to work harder. The role model may be a fellow worker in a better position or top-level personnel in the organization. The success of these people leads the employees to work harder. Studies on teamwork have shown mixed influences in terms of creativity among the employees. It depends on the individuals present in the team. An individual may be comfortable working alone and this can drive his creative intent. In other cases, teams consisting of different individuals can be creative through a process of brainstorming and experiments. The presence of goals and rewards attached to it can also drive the individuals to work harder. They may be motivated by the type of work or rewards and take it upon themselves as a challenge to achieve it. Evaluation of works is beneficial for works, which are not creative. Creativity is a time consuming process and most of the organizations evaluate their employees on the basis of a time period. The knowledge of these factors has been influential in understanding the driving powers behind creativity. The knowledge will be helpful in motivating employees and increasing the productivity of the organization. Therefore, the article gives us a clear picture on how individuals can be motivated to work towards creativity. Creativity, as a subject, has gained prominence in today’s world with the growth of competition. Several companies serve the same products to the same set of customers. To gain a foothold in the industry, one has to be creative enough to serve something different. The top companies in the world are following the path of creativity to boost their market share and sales. In the future, to survive this intense competition companies should engage themselves in creative activities. Work Cited 1. Egan, Toby. Factors influencing individual creativity in the workplace: an examination of quantitative empirical research. Advances in developing human resources, May 2005 Read More