| The desire for creativity in almost every setting is ubiquitous. This research focuses on the motivational factors that may encourage or inhibit creative work in organizational settings.;This work proposed to develop a model and test hypotheses to answer the question, "How can management or the organization motivate creative work?" In a laboratory experiment, 96 subjects, students of fashion design, participated in a task designed to test creativity under controlled situations. The twelve-cell factorial design examined the effects of flexibility of deadline, freedom in choice of problem, and closeness of supervision. The study was completed with a post-experimental questionnaire designed to examine mediating variables and to support the internal validity of the experiment.;The results of the study suggest that typical extrinsic rewards are less effective in motivating creative work than are certain privileges, which may be more appropriately considered intrinsic factors. Specifically, some freedom in choice of problem and flexibility in deadlines appear to result in improved quality as measured in this study. Other significant factors include initial commitment and interest in the work itself, sex, time to complete the task, and eventual desire for self-employment. Creative individuals who are intrinsically motivated respond best to extrinsic motivating factors that encourage the creative process--choice, time, and autonomy.;Further interesting implications of this work suggest that professional judgment of creative work seems to be a composite of both originality and technical ability. It further seems that creativity as evaluated by organizations is trainable. The final conclusion, not surprisingly, is that the creative process is extraordinarily complex, as is motivation theory, and there is a distinct possibility that creative individuals do indeed march to a different drummer. |
