| The purpose of this investigation was to describe and examine the impact of executive team excellence and the work environment of acute care, general hospitals as expected to contribute to organizational creativity. Selected dimensions of the work environment included stimulants and obstacles to creativity.; The principal foundation of the study was the interactionist model of organizational creativity by Woodman, Sawyer, and Griffin (1993). Team excellence was derived from the Team Excellence Model by Larson and LaFasto (1989). Amabile's (1988a) model of creativity and innovation served as the basis for the examination of impact of the work environment on organizational creativity.; The randomly selected sample was 13 hospital executive teams, which represented 8% of the 170 requests mailed to potential participants, in four south Atlantic region states and the District of Columbia. Executive teams were defined as including the team leader (chief executive officer) and two team members (chief financial and nurse executives).; A descriptive, correlational research design was used. Team excellence was measured using the "Team Excellence" assessments (Larson & LaFasto, 1987). Work environmental stimulants and obstacles to creativity and organizational creativity were measured using the "KEYS Assessing the Climate for Creativity" survey by Amabile (1987a, 1990, 1995a). A researcher-developed questionnaire was used to obtain information on the hospital attributes. Data analysis included correlations and descriptive statistics. Nonparametric tests were used due to sample size and departures from normality.; Overall respondents rated their team performance, stimulants to creativity in the work environment and organizational creativity higher on all assessment scales than normative data. In this study sample, hospital executive teams perceived clear, elevating goal, organizational encouragement, supervisory encouragement and challenging work as important aspects for organizational creativity. Organizational impediments and workload pressure were negatively correlated with organizational creativity, but non-significant.; It seems that the most important lesson for hospital executives is that team performance and the intra-organizational environment play a role in distinguishing high from low levels of creativity in organizations. Despite the limitations, outcomes suggest further expansion and delineation of this research. |
