Jing Zhou

Rice University · Faculty of Organizational Behavior

Individual and team creativity and innovation are essential for organizational effectiveness and success. The typology we developed in 2014 has stimulated much research in the past decade. We review this body of work and structure our article around the four quadrants described in our typology. We then revisit and update the eight research recommen...

Few studies have focused on how power influences an idea receiver's endorsement of creative ideas. By integrating associative evaluation theory with insights from the power literature, we identify power as an important receivers’ factor that accentuates the relation between an idea's creativity level and receivers’ endorsement. We contend that the...

Although organizations increasingly rely on teams to innovate, little systematic knowledge exists about how to design teams to do so. Building on the model of collaborative creativity and innovation and synthesizing findings from published and unpublished studies, this meta‐analysis examines the role of team design on team creativity and innovation...

Differently valenced affective states stimulate different information search and processing styles. Dual tuning theory suggests that in combination, the styles tuned by positive affect (broad information search and flexible thinking) and by negative affect (persistent detailed search and critical thinking) facilitate creativity better than a single...

Jing Zhou also blends a personal account of Teresa’s work with her professional influence. Zhou commends Amabile’s research for three main reasons: (1) creating a coherent body of work, (2) being courageous in challenging assumptions, and (3) making a positive contribution to the community. She then details how these commendable aspects of Amabile’...

Understanding the receiving side of creativity has both scientific and practical value. Creativity can add value to organizations after it is perceived, evaluated, and eventually adopted. In this paper, we review four decades of empirical research on the receiving side of creativity scattered across several business and social science fields. A com...

We conducted a phenomenon-based research study in China. Starting with interviews and observations to capture the phenomenon, we built on and extended the challenge stressor–hindrance stressor framework to investigate how task complexity interacts with managing guanxi with a supervisor to influence the relationship between introversion and creativi...

Feedback is a ubiquitous management tool. Employing it to enhance team creativity raises an important question of whether positive or negative feedback is more effective. Unfortunately, prior research on feedback valence and creativity is limited to the individual level, neglecting team creativity’s interdependent and knowledge-intensive nature. We...

While high performers contribute substantially to their workgroups and organizations, research has indicated that they incur social costs from peers. Drawing from theories of social comparison and conservation of resources, we advance a rational perspective to explain why high performers draw both intentional positive and negative reactions from pe...

Novelty recognition is the crucial starting point for extracting value from the ideas generated by others. In this paper we develop an associative evaluation account for how personal and contextual factors motivate individuals to perceive novelty and creativity. We report 4 studies that systematically tested hypotheses developed from this perspecti...

Drawing on the componential theory of creativity, social cognitive theory, and prosocial motivation theory, we examined intrinsic motivation, creative self-efficacy, and prosocial motivation as distinct motivational mechanisms underlying creativity. Results from a meta-analysis of 191 independent samples (N = 51,659) documented in the relevant lite...

Based on the job-crafting perspective, we theorized a serial curvilinear mediated moderation model that links underemployment to two outcomes that benefit the organization: creativity and organizational citizenship behavior. A three-waved time-lagged survey of teachers and a field study of technical workers provided convergent support for this mode...

This inter-human resource (HR) systems research investigates whether, how, and when different types of employee-experienced HR systems jointly influence employee creativity. We hypothesize and find that employee-experienced performance-oriented HR systems were more positively related to employee domain-relevant skills when employees experienced str...

Building on the sensemaking perspective, we theorize and test conditions under which perceived innovation job requirement increases employee innovative behavior. Using data consisting of 311 employee–supervisor pairs from two companies in China, we found that perceived innovation job requirement had a more positive relation with innovative behavior...

We develop a conceptual model to theorize the impact of high versus low power distance cultural contexts on group creativity and individual group member creativity. High power distance cultural contexts manifest in group social environments where status differentiation among individuals is expected and accepted. This hierarchical social environment...

Integrating insights from the literature on customers' central role in service and the literature on employee creativity, we offer theoretical and empirical account of how and when customer empowering behaviors can motivate employee creativity during service encounters and, subsequently, influence customer satisfaction with service experience. Usin...

The purpose of this Handbook is to serve as a catalyst for the integration of the research on creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. A significant amount of research has been devoted to each of these areas, and they exist fairly independently of each other. However, by their nature, these three•research areas are interrelated. In order to su...

Traditionally, research on group affect has been shaped by the perspective of affect convergence. Under this perspective, group affect is presumed to converge (become homogenous) for group functioning to be explained meaningfully. Scholars of group affect have recently begun to question this premise, however, arguing that affect diversity among mem...

Social networks can be important sources of information and insights that may spark employee creativity. The cross-fertilization of ideas depends not just on access to information and insights through one’s direct network – the people one actually interacts with – but at least as much on access to the indirect network one’s direct ties connect one...

Drawing on job crafting perspective, we theorized an integrative model linking perceived underemployment to three behavioral outcomes, creative performance, organizational citizenship behavior and destructive deviance. Using data collected from two sources (327 teachers and their immediate supervisors) via a three-wave time-lagged research design,...

Taking an interactional approach, we hypothesized that (a) there is an interaction between empowering leadership, uncertainty avoidance, and trust that affects creativity, such that empowering leadership has the strongest positive relationship with creativity when the employees have high levels of uncertainty avoidance and trust their supervisors;...

Creativity and innovation in any organization are vital to its successful performance. The authors review the rapidly growing body of research in this area with particular attention to the period 2002 to 2013, inclusive. Conceiving of both creativity and innovation as being integral parts of essentially the same process, we propose a new, integrati...

Workplace creativity exhibited by individual employees and teams is a key driver of organizational innovation and success. After briefly touching upon issues related to the historical roots of research on workplace creativity, we focus on reviewing empirical work published since 2000 by researchers in the field of organizational psychology and mana...

This multilevel research examines intrinsic motivation, domain-relevant skills, and creativity-relevant skills as the links between systems of human resources (HR) practices and employee creativity. Integrating the strategic HR research and the componential theory of creativity, we hypothesize that intrinsic motivation mediates the relationship bet...

Auf gesellschaftlicher Ebene ist Kreativität ein wesentlicher Faktor für wirtschaftliches Wachstum und soziale Entwicklung (Florida 2004; Schumpeter 1939). Kreativität ist ferner auf den Ebenen von Individuen, Teams und Organisationen ein Schlüsselfaktor für Leistung, Unternehmertum, Wachstum und Wettbewerb (Amabile 1996; Oldham und Cummings 1996;...

In this study, we examine when creativity is positively or negatively related to firm performance. Building on the creation–implementation tension theorized in the literature and the attention capacity perspective, we argue that the relationship between creativity and firm performance is contingent on riskiness orientation, firm size, and realized...

In this article, we first review cross-cultural research, especially that concerning similarities and differences between East Asian and Western cultures, on creativity using laboratory tasks and tests. On the basis of this review, we then propose some directions for future cross-cultural research on creativity in the workplace. We emphasize the ne...

As the largest and fastest growing transition economy in the world, China's entrance onto the global stage has been swift and dramatic. As such, almost every facet of entrepreneurship, from the identification of nascent opportunities to the challenges of managing triple-digit growth to the transformation of firms from dying to emerging industries,...

Taking an interactional perspective on creativity, the authors examined the influence of social networks and conformity value on employees' creativity. They theorized and found a curvilinear relationship between number of weak ties and creativity such that employees exhibited greater creativity when their number of weak ties was at intermediate lev...

We developed and tested a cross-level model of individual creativity, integrating goal orientation theory and team learning research. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we found cross-level interactions between individuals' goal orientation and team learning behavior in a cross-national sample of 25 R&D teams comprising 198 employees. We hypothesi...

This study examined employees' subjective experiences of creativity after mergers. Based on a sample of 484 employees, results showed the following: First, if employees considered the merger as an opportunity (threat), then they perceived that they exhibited greater (less) creativity after the merger; second, organizational support for creativity m...

Effects of external evaluation expectation on two parts of the creative idea production process (i.e., variation and selective retention) and on final product creativity were examined in this study. Results from a laboratory study (N = 73) showed that evaluation expectation exerted different effects on variation and selective retention. During vari...

In this article I provide brief review and comments on three articles presented at the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal's Launch Conference and published in this issue of the Journal. Arguing that creativity plays an important role in the entire entrepreneurial process and that contemporary research on creativity has much to offer in advancing ou...

Management and Organization Review Special Issue on ‘Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in China’ - Volume 4 Issue 1 - Phillip Phan, Jing Zhou, Eric Abrahamson

The authors examined conditions under which teams' educational specialization heterogeneity was positively related to team creativity. Using a sample of 75 research and development teams, the authors theorized and found that transformational leadership and educational specialization heterogeneity interacted to affect team creativity in such a way t...

We develop a dual-tuning perspective concerning how positive and negative moods interact to influence creativity in supportive contexts. Using data on employees in an oil field services company, we hypothesized and found that when supervisors provided a supportive context for creativity and positive mood was high, negative mood had a strong, positi...

Using a policy-capturing approach, in this study we examined the extent to which 4 variables (work performance, relationship with coworkers, relationship with managers, and personal needs) affect the process through which Chinese and American managers make 2 types of compensation award decisions (bonus amounts and nonmonetary recognition). Results...

In this chapter, I develop a model concerning effects of paternalistic organizational control on group creativity. I develop the model on the basis of a diverse set of literatures, including research on individual and group creativity, paternalistic leadership, self-systems theory, and its implications for impact of choice on intrinsic motivation....

This study examines the possibility that 2 employee background attributes, childhood residential density and childhood community type, moderate relations between characteristics of the physical work environment and employee responses. Administrative employees (N= 75) from 25 offices of a university participated in the research. Results demonstrate...

This article systematically reviews and integrates empirical research that has examined the personal and contextual characteristics that enhance or stifle employee creativity in the workplace. Based on our review, we discuss possible determinants of employee creativity that have received little research attention, describe several areas where subst...

: The recognition and support of employee creative ideas is a crucial component in organizational creativity. In this paper, we explore a social-cognitive approach to explaining the conditions under which a manager is likely to consider an employee idea as creative. Our model posits that the manager's ‘creativity schema’ dictates recognition of cre...

Using a sample of 290 employees and their supervisors from 46 Korean companies, we found that (1) transformational leadership was positively related to follower creativity, (2) followers' "conservation", a value, moderated that relationship, and (3) intrinsic motivation mediated the contribution of the interaction of transformational leadership and...

The examination of contextual factors that enhance or stifle employees’ creative performance is a new but rapidly growing research area. Theory and research in this area have focused on antecedents of employee creativity. In this paper, we review and discuss the major theoretical frameworks that have served as conceptual foundations for empirical s...

Creative activities are affect-laden. Laboring at perhaps the most inspiring and difficult of human endeavors, a creator frequently experiences the excitement of discovery and the anguish of failure. Engaging in creativity in organizations inevitably creates tension, conflict, and emotionally charged debates and disagreements because complex organi...

Study 1 was conducted to examine the contribution of the joint condition of supervisor close monitoring and the presence of creative coworkers to employees' creativity. In addition to replicating Study 1's results, Study 2 examined (a) the joint condition of supervisor developmental feedback and presence of creative coworkers and (b) whether creati...

Using a mood-as-input model, the authors identified conditions under which negative moods are positively related, and positive moods are negatively related, to creative performance. Among a sample of workers in an organizational unit charged with developing creative designs and manufacturing techniques, the authors hypothesized and found that negat...

This study examined the independent and joint effects of expected developmental assessment strategies (self-administered, other-administered, and no assessment) and creative personality on individuals' creative performance. Data were collected from 68 participants who performed a role-playing task in a laboratory setting. Results showed that indivi...

This study focused on the conditions under which job dissatisfaction will lead to creativity as an expression of voice. We theorized that useful feedback from coworkers, coworker helping and support, and perceived organizational support for creativity would each interact with job dissatisfaction and continuance commitment (commitment motivated by n...

This study adopted an interactional approach to understanding how 2 of the Five-Factor traits, openness to experience and conscientiousness, are related to creative behavior in the workplace. Openness to experience is theorized to result in high levels of creative behavior and conscientiousness is theorized to result in low levels of creative behav...

This study adopted an interactional approach to understanding how 2 of the Five-Factor traits, openness to experience and conscientiousness, are related to creative behavior in the workplace. Openness to experience is theorized to result in high levels of creative behavior and conscientiousness is theorized to result in low levels of creative behav...

Relational demography research has emphasized a similarity–attraction paradigm in explaining employees' reactions to demographic differences from other organizational members. This study examined similarity–attraction (nondirectional age differences) and status incongruence (directional age differences) predictions of age difference effects. The no...

This study examined the interactive effects of 3 contextual variables (feedback valence, feedback style, and task autonomy) on creative performance. Data were collected from participants who performed a role-playing task in a laboratory setting ( N = 210). Results demonstrated that the 3 contextual variables interacted to affect creative performanc...

Using a quasi-experimental design, this study examined relations between stereo headset use and employee work responses. Employees ( N = 256) worked on 32 jobs in an office of a retail organization. Employees indicated whether they were interested in using stereos at work. From those expressing an interest, a random sample ( n = 75) was assigned to...