Cultivating Creativity: Implications of transformational changes on creative process engagement
Abstract: The study aims to develop a deeper understanding of how transformational changes can affect employees’ creative process engagement. By conducting a single case study at a technology organization that has been undergoing several transformational changes over the last decade, we have tried to reach our aim. Adopting an interpretive approach, we have investigated our research problem by conducting semi-structured interviews with 17 employees at our case organization. These interviews have let us capture the employees’ perception and experience of their situation. Our findings suggest that the change has led to a perceived psychological contract breach, that has decreased some employees’ engagement, while others still engage in creative processes. Challenging the theory, we suggest two explanations for why employees are still inclined to engage. Firstly, the creative process engagement seems to lie outside of their psychological contract with the organization, thus their engagement is not affected when the focal contract is breached. Secondly, employees’ who still engage seem to have a high level of creative self-efficacy, indicating that when creative self-efficacy is high, it is more influential on creative process engagement than a psychological contract breach. The suggested explanations both challenge and add to current theory on creative process engagement. We end by suggesting relevant further research on the subject of creative process engagement.
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