Colleagues Feedback And Individual Creativity

Recent theory and research on organizational creativity has emphasized the need of identifying which contextual variables enhance individual creativity and interpreting the mechanism underlying the effect as well(e.g.,Amabile et al.,1996; Woodman,Sawyer,& Griffin,1993).However,what are the most effective ways to construct a work environment to release employees' creative energy? At present we know too little to answer this question with confidence(Zhou,1998).The present Study sought to find new contextual effects on creativity from the perspective of coworker feedback environment by(a)examining the effects of different type of coworker feedback on individual creativity and(b)exploring the moderate effect of publicness of privateness on the relation between coworker feedback and individual creativity.Based on the conceptual discussion and empirical research,we summarize the finding and implication such as:1)We suggest four types of coworker feedback based on two dimension of feedback include,feedback valence and the locus of feedback.And the results of empirical research provide supportive evidence for the typology.The study shows that, positive feedback doesn't always seems to be more facilitative to creative performance than negative feedback,the effect also depends on the content.And overall,behavioral feedback has stronger effect on individual creativity than outcome feedback.It means that though people are used to be outcome-oriented when evaluate others in Chinese culture context,process or behavior-oriented appraisal and feedback would be more constructive.2)In addition,this study demonstrated that pubilicness and privateness shows substantial moderate effects on the relation between coworker feedback and individual creativity.Specifically,in public,individuals received positive and negative outcome feedback exhibit greater and less creativity respectively.On the other hand, individual received positive outcome as well as behavioral feedback in private exhibit greater creativity.And it has interesting implication for managers.To encourage creativity,managers should not neglect the occasional factor when they encourage the feedback transfer between employees.3)At last,our finding in the present research could serve to explain the inconsistency in the research literature.Zhou(1998)have mentioned that,several organizational researchers have argued that negative feedback is better than positive feedback for performance enhancement,because it signals the gap between the current level of performance and the situational criteria,but the results of her study didn't support such an argument.As regards the contextual difference between these studies,we suggest that the former argument focus on outcome feedback,ands latter result was based on process of behavioral feedback context.Our study indicated that, for outcome feedback,negative valence is better than positive valence for creative performance enhancement;on the other hand,process or behavioral feedback in positive condition is more facilitative,than negative condition.