Microsoft Word 2007 ichrie conference Proceedings Final-Final 06-06-07. doc

 

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2007 Annual International CHRIE Conference & Exposition 
366
CREATIVITY 
Creativity, as a construct relevant to business management, has been explored from several standpoints. 
Organisations value creativity because it assists in responding to rapidly changing global and external forces and 
provides the stimulus for internal flexibility and revitalisation (Tan, 1998). Definitions of creativity are contested. It 
has been described as an individual skill or process, which “depends to some extent on personality characteristics” 
(Amabile, 1997:43), and one which, pertinently for this study, can be heightened when aligned with intrinsic (task) 
motivation. Yet most contemporary researchers view creativity as innovation – or outcome based – manifest in 
product development and its processes (Oldham & Cummings, 1996), acknowledging that the factors affecting 
employee creativity are multifaceted. Hence, much research energy has focussed on identifying the factors that 
promote employee creativity, whether personal or (work) environmental. Personal characteristics, though more 
complex than is achievable here, emanate from biographical history, cognitive styles and intelligence (Oldham & 
Cummings, 1996). Alternatively, Unsworth, Wall and Carter (2005) suggest four work factors are prominent: 
empowerment, support for leadership, sanctioning innovation and time pressures. A range of training regimes, 
consultancies, leadership programmes and integrated approaches (Tan, 1998) have been utilised to exploit the 
myriad of ways in which personality and work environment may intersect to enhance organisational innovation and 
gain competitive advantage.
It has been suggested though, that creativity requirement, a dimension of employee creativity, has 
been partially unaccounted for in previous research. Unsworth et al. define creativity requirement “as the perception 
that one is expected, or needs, to generate work-related ideas” (2005:542), which is distinct from the oft-used 
employee creativity dimension of creative output. Their findings suggest that creativity requirement may be a 
determinant of employee creativity factors and as such recommend that “interventions aimed at increasing perceived 
levels of creative requirement… (e.g. performance appraisals, training and development and organizational symbols) 
may lead to increased creativity” (Unsworth et al., 2005:556). The creativity requirement dimension is tested in 
another context by Shalley, Gilson and Blum (2000), who find that when the organisational factors supportive of 
employee creativity are aligned with creativity requirement higher job satisfaction and lower intention to quit are 
resultant. In linking dimensions of the creativity construct with job satisfaction, and intention to quit, this intrinsic 
motivator, previously found to have been characteristic of chefs’ occupational culture, seems worthy of further 
investigation as a moderator of turnover behaviour. A further important finding indicates that employees may 
differentiate between job (occupational) characteristics and organisational characteristics (Shalley et al., 2000). 
While in the hospitality context creativity has been found to be a motivator for hotel managers and supervisors 
(Wong & Pang, 2003) no relationship with intention to quit has been identified. This paper, then, examines the 
intersection of these human resource management constructs as they apply to foodservice operations in the 
management of a sample of private membership clubs in south east Queensland (SEQ), Australia, but from the 
relatively unexplored viewpoint of occupational as well as organisational commitment (Riley, Lockwood, Powell-
Perry, and Baker, 1998).