Foundations of creativity in the workplace

: the impact of cognitive and emotional culture on creativity

Abstract

Creativity plays a fundamental role in the current environment of global change and everadvancing technologies, which continuously present new challenges to organizations. Despite its importance, there remains a gap in the literature regarding its drivers. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to identify the factors that can drive both personal and team creativity in the workplace. Specifically, this thesis investigates what kind of organizational culture is best to stimulate creativity—cognitive culture, namely through a culture of innovation, or emotional culture, namely through a culture of joy. To this end, this paper considers the organizational culture of a Portuguese industrial company that is a great advocate of creativity and innovation. The data was gathered through surveys, using a sample that covered 268 employees, 32 supervisors, 12 departments, and 32 teams. The results suggest that: a) an emotional culture of joy has a positive impact on personal creativity; b) an emotional culture of joy has a greater positive impact on personal creativity than does a cognitive culture of innovation; c) there is a statistically significant interaction between an emotional culture of joy and a cognitive culture of innovation; and d) such interaction translates to a relatively strong effect of a culture of joy on team creativity for teams possessing a weak culture of innovation and no effect on this parameter for teams possessing a strong culture of innovation. This thesis contributes to the body of literature addressing the stimulation of creativity and the effect of positive emotions on creative behavior.

Date of Award	24 Jul 2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Francesco Sguera (Supervisor)