Creative participation in construction firms: bridging creativity and innovation

Abstract

o r g a n i z a t i o n , t e c h n o l o g y a n d m a n a g e m e n t i n c o n s t r u c t i o n · a n i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l · 4(2)2012 490Creative participation in construction firms: bridging creativity and innovation Keywordsan intricate evolution of mainstream theories follows the growing need to explain employees' commitment and engagement. Our understanding of these work-related phenomena and behaviour has improved but creativity and innovation as desired indicators are still often treated as coexisting constructs with very little attention given to a state of willingness of an individual to even consider contributing ideas. In this research we investigate the influence of knowledge and understanding, perceived radicality, personality dimensions, and favouring of ideas on employee willingness to creatively participate in order to trace its existence in propagation of ideas. A total of 76 construction and non-construction professionals participated in between-subject quasi-experiments. We also proposed IPO-based radicality of ideas construct from the viewpoint of employees involved in the processes of transformation. The research findings show that experts with deep understanding of the work are more likely to contribute highly radical ideas to decision-makers than less knowledgeable employees. Furthermore, personal factors that impact employee willingness to creatively participate have been valued higher than organisational factors. Personality dimensions by The BigFive Inventory have shown no effect on willingness to contribute ideas, while favouring of ideas showed a significant effect. In general, the findings show similarities with some studies of consumer willingness to participate in co-creation processes and thus indicate that firms may be studied as dynamic internal markets of ideas. 491 INTRODUCTIONCommitted and highly engaged employees that are passionate about their work represent the backbone of successful companies Ho et al., 2011). Many scholars have argued for decades that successful companies rely on entrepreneurial innovations of their teams and individual employees (Chadwick and Dabu, 2009;Hitt et al., 1997). It has also long ago been established that such employees are devoted to a task and generate more ideas or solutions to potential problems (Simon, 1955). However, a creative idea can only become an innovation or a solution to a problem if it is transformed from a concept into reality (Roffe, 1999). By providing ideas, an individual is, therefore, clearly at the crux of this transformation (Mumford, 2000). Whilst creativity in this form is recognized as an important underpinning of innovation (Oldham and Cummings, 1996;Zhou, 2003), most of the research on the subject has focused on the outcomes of creative processes (Zhou and George, 2003). Scholars that conceptualize creativity as a process are still forming an emerging field of enquiry (Gilson, 2008;Lubart, 2001). However, even in these studies the question whether an individual is willing to contribute the ge...

Driving users’ behaviours and engagement in co-creating services

“…Considerable literature identifies the effects of personality traits on other constructs, such as divergent thinking (Chamorro-Premuzic and Reichenbacher, 2008), word-ofmouth (Ferguson et al, 2010) or relationship formation (Bove and Mitzifiris, 2007). The mixed results indicate significant effects of personality traits on behaviours (Chamorro-Premuzic and Reichenbacher, 2008;Ferguson et al, 2010) or not (Bove and Mitzifiris, 2007;Sergeeva and Radosavljevic, 2012). Accordingly, the current research explores the influence of the commonly used "Big Five" personality trait taxonomy (John and Srivastava, 1999) on participation and citizenship behaviours.…”

“…This point helps explain some of the surprising findings from Study 1. For example, extraversion has a negative effect on users' participation behaviours during co-creation, which seems counterintuitive, in that an extraverted, outgoing personality often has been positively associated with idea creation, divergent thinking and engagementall positive indicators of co-creation (Chamorro-Premuzic and Reichenbacher, 2008;Mondak et al, 2010;Sergeeva and Radosavljevic, 2012). However, as discussed in Study 1, extraverted people can also be dominant and overly talkative (Toegel and Barsoux, 2012), two compound traits listed in Figure 4 of users not likely to co-create.…”

Employees and the Innovative Idea Contribution Process: Clarifying Individual and Contextual Characteristics

“…Janssen, 2004;Woodman et al, 1993;Zhou et al, 2009). The current paper extended the analysis of the data presented by Sergeeva and Radosavljevic (2012), conducting correlations and scale reliability tests in order to examine the interrelationships between the individual and contextual characteristics.…”

“…Building upon motivation theories and literature on organization citizenship behaviour, Sergeeva and Radosavljevic (2012) conceptualize willingness to contribute ideas as an interface between creativity and innovation influenced by individual and contextual characteristics. These ideas are taken further, building on more recent studies on voice behaviour, silence, issue selling, personal initiatives and interactional perspective widely used in creativity and innovation research.…”

“…Employee willingness to propose an idea to other organizational actors may be seen as a conceptual mediator between the idea generation and the idea implementation events (e.g. Sergeeva and Radosavljevic, 2012). It is important to note that employees can engage in any combinations of these behaviors over time because innovation is assumed to be a dynamic process that unfolds over time in social contexts (e.g.…”