A Network Model of Goals Boosts Convergent Creativity Performance

Abstract

To increase employee creativity is critical for organizational success, and yet we still know very little about what organizational contexts promote creative performance. Our research proposes that goal regulation in the workplace may have consequences for creativity. While there is an increasing trend for organizations and workers to visualize the structure of their goals (e.g., management hierarchy, concept-map, flowchart), prior research suggests the visualization approaches differ as one of the three types: hierarchical, network, and sequential models. Because a network model (vs. hierarchical and sequential models) highlights multiple connections between goals and reveals unobvious connections between them, we hypothesized that the use of a network goal model might increase people's ability to integrate seemingly unrelated ideas, even on subsequent unrelated tasks, leading to higher (convergent) creative performance. To test the hypothesis, we conducted an experiment in 2017 manipulating participants' goal models (hierarchical, network, sequential; N = 191, median age = 19) and measured their creativity. Results suggest that those in the network model condition performed better in the kind of creativity task that requires meaningful integration of unrelated ideas (i.e., convergent creativity); in contrast, there was no difference between goal model conditions on divergent creative performance. These findings thus illuminate how goal models may influence creativity, providing new insights into situational inductions that can boost creative performance. Theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and future directions of the work are discussed.

Keywords: creativity; goal models; goal regulation; goal structure; multiple goals; network model.

FIGURE 1

A hierarchical company goal tree (Dettmer, 2007). CSF, critical success factor; NC, necessary condition of the goal.

FIGURE 2

(A) A network model of sustainability goals (The Coca-Cola Company, 2018). Picture copyrighted by the Coca-Cola Company, https://www.coca-colacompany.com/sustainability. (B) A network business model of Ryanair (Casadesus-Masanell and Ricart, 2011).

FIGURE 3

A timeline of worker goals (Asana, 2018). Picture copyrighted by Asana, Inc., https://asana.com/product.

FIGURE 4

Goal model manipulation task descriptions: network model condition.

FIGURE 5

The unfinished diagrams for participants to complete in the goal model manipulation task.

FIGURE 6

A panel of convergent and divergent creative performance as a function of goal model condition. Error bars = ±1 standard error.