Effects Of Managerial Factors On The Undergraduates' Creative Thinking

Creativity is the source of human progress. The psychology researchers should pay more attention to the research of creativity. This study is based on three points: First, the creativity research is turning from the personal characteristics of high creative people to the environmental factors which affect creativity; second, the rapid development of modern society depends on individual's creativity is not enough. It can be more effective by relying on the cooperation of team. Individual creativity is far more different from team creativity; third, the man-machine group may differ from the face-to-face group in creative output.This study uses students of Soochow University as subjects. In order to study the environmental factors which may affect the group creativity and the differences between man-machine group and the face-to-face group, the study uses the method of four-person panel to compare the outputs of different experimental treatment. This study is conducted by three experiment and all of them use fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration of the output as dependent variables.Experiment 1: In this experiment we investigate the effect of incentive on the creative outputs produced by panel discussion. The results showed that the outputs from the group without incentive are significantly higher than the incentive group on fluency, flexibility and originality. Incentives in the group couldn't increase the creative outputs. Incentives reduced the group's concern about the process of the activity but more concern about the incentives after the activity. The incentive groups are more satisfied than the groups without incentives.Experiment 2: This part investigates the effect of two independent variables (competition style & leadership style) on the output from the face-to-face groups'panel discussion. The results showed that the independent variables have significant effect on three other dependent variables except the elaboration.1. From the point of competition style, competition is conductive for the face-to-face groups to produce more ideas;2. From the point of leadership style, groups which leader is elected through Creativity Test performed the worst;3. Groups which leader is elected by team members perform the best at the level of competition and competition & collaboration. The groups with no leaders perform the best at the level of collaboration.4. It seems that the effect of collaboration is relatively weakened.Experiment 3: This experiment investigates the effect of two independent variables (competition style & leadership style) on the output from the man-machine group's panel discussion. The results showed that the independent variables have significant effect on three dependent variables.1. At the level of having leaders (leaders elected through creativity tests, leaders elected by term members), competition & collaboration groups and collaborative groups were both higher than the competitive groups; at the level of having no leaders, the competitive groups and the competition & collaboration groups were both higher than the collaborative groups.2. The combination of competition and no leaders as well as the combination of collaboration and the leader elected by term members could produce better creativity.3. At the man-machine interactive discussion, the effect of competition is relatively weakened.