Organization Development Commons^™

Disability Injustice: A Latino’S Creative Autoethnographic Testimonio On The Organizational Culture Of Higher Education, Leonel A. Diaz Jr.

Organization, Information and Learning Sciences ETDs

Using creative autoethnographic testimonio (CAT), a story is told about the injustices within the learning environment and work environment of higher education toward a person with disabilities: sleep apnea, learning disabilities, negative mental health. The author explores the health difficulties of addressing sleep deprivation while attending graduate school and working full-time as a professional. With sleep apnea impacting his health, his mental health declines. As his health declines, there is an increase in discrimination, hostility, oppression, bullying, and toxic masculinity. Initially, the medical system dismisses his declining health and refuses to look further into it. Once he receives medical care …

Pressure To Be Creative: How Employees Respond To Organizational Creativity Pressure, Hye Jung Eun

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Creativity and innovation are vital for organizational growth and success, driving many organizations to increase pressure for employee creativity. Yet, researchers have neglected investigating how employees respond to creativity pressure at the workplace. This dissertation introduces and develops a new scale for the concept of organizational creativity pressure – the pressure on employees to continually develop novel and useful ideas and solutions. The scale is further validated through extensive assessment of content and construct validity, empirically differentiating the construct from similar others such as performance pressure and support for creativity.

Drawing on the transactional theory of stress (Lazarus & Folkman, …

Co-Creating The Future: Working With Groups To Assess, Plan, And Innovate, Gregory A. Smith

Faculty Publications and Presentations

Evolving conditions require organizations to change. Organizational leaders must engage with stakeholders to co-create their shared future; in many cases, this involves working with groups of people. This presentation shares five techniques for facilitating effective group sessions:

1. Establish and uphold rules of engagement.
2. Ask specific, deliberate questions.
3. Use constraints to unleash creativity.
4. Use concrete resources to stimulate thinking.
5. Sequence activities to achieve desired outcomes.

Is The Sum Greater Than The Parts? A Qualitative Case Study Of Cross-Functional Team Creativity., Tracy J. Richardson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Creativity is an important capability for organizations to develop solutions for complex challenges. Cross-functional teams are often used within organizations in the hope of leveraging diverse perspectives to develop creative ideas. However, the process by which cross-functional teams generate new ideas is often elusive in practice and poorly understood in research. A case-study design was used to explore the complex nature of the creative process within a services industry organization, which is an understudied context for creativity. The study focused on the knowledge sharing and knowledge integration processes for cross-functional teams as well as overall team effectiveness. The results of …

Surprisingly Open Or Openly Surprised? That Is The Question; Using Surprise Experiences To Increase Openness To Experience And Tolerance Of Ambiguity, Anneke Veenendaal-De Kort

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Using Surprise Experiences to Increase Openness to Experience and Tolerance of Ambiguity

In the fast-changing world in which we are currently living, we constantly come across situations and problems that we have not encountered before. An open mind and the ability to tolerate ambiguity are important skills in uncertain times. People who embrace the unpredictable can develop their resilience and flexibility. Surprisologists Luna and Renninger (2015) have discovered that a great way of dipping into unpredictability is through surprise. For my Master’s Project, I designed experiences that transform people’s openness and tolerance for ambiguity through surprise. This paper begins with …

Supporting Healthcare Teams With Implementation Projects: Shaping A Toolbox, Carian Van Der Sman

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project explores a) the challenges healthcare professionals experience when they work in a team to implement new (but elsewhere existing or proven) products or solutions into their practice and b) how a toolbox of creativity and change methods, tools and techniques might look like to support them to overcome these challenges. This project shows that healthcare professionals most likely benefit from 1) tools that provide teambuilding and would support the sense of growing together, 2) tools that would demonstrate an overview of types of resistance they could face and strategies to overcome them and 3) tools that provide an …

Developing A Leadership Curriculum 'Innovation, Creativity And Leadership', Pamela Zh Pauwels

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Growth and innovation are key drivers to a company’s long-term success. Creativity (creative thinking) is a necessary condition for innovation. Supervisors and managers who are able to build a positive work environment that enables creative and innovative behavior have a competitive advantage. This Master's project focuses on the development of an in-company leadership curriculum to provide leaders and supervisor with theoretical background and a “ toolbox ” to develop their own and their team’s innovative and creative behavior. A pilot version of curriculum was well received and validated the need to gain more understanding on the topic of creativity and …

A Parish Guide To The Use Of Creative Problem Solving In Marketing Plan Development, Patricia H. Meyer

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The purpose of this project is to show how Creative Problem Solving can be introduced into the development of a marketing plan for a church parish. Background as to the need for a marketing plan and the advantages of using Creative Problem Solving techniques will be discussed, as well as some of the theology which might underlie the process undertaken by a marketing committee. Particular attention will be given to the context of the Catholic Church and theology, as that is my personal background and training. A sample process guide will be included to provide a parish with a model …

Creativity From Constraint? How Political Correctness Influences Creativity In Mixed-Sex Work Groups, Jack Goncalo, Jennifer Chatman, Michelle Duguid, Jessica Kennedy

Jack Goncalo

Most group creativity research is premised on the assumption that creativity is unleashed by removing normative constraints. As work organizations become increasingly diverse in terms of gender, however, this assumption needs to be reconsidered since mixed-sex interactions carry a high risk of offense. Departing from the assumption that normative constraints necessarily stifle creativity, we develop a theoretical perspective in which creativity in mixed-sex groups is enhanced by imposing a norm to be politically correct (PC)—a norm that sets clear expectations for how men and women should interact with one another. We present evidence from two group experiments showing that the …

Improving The Understanding Of The Impact Of Creative Problem Solving Training Through An Examination Of Individual Differences, Russell A. Wheeler

Creative Studies Graduate Student Master's Theses

This thesis addressed the relationships between students who reported enjoyment of learning and the perceived future value of using the various components, stages and tools of the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) process, and their CPS styles as measured by the Buffalo Creative Process Inventory (BCPI). Data was collected using the BCPI and an end-of-course survey in both graduate and undergraduate introductory CPS courses from January through December 2000. A key quantitative outcome revealed that the principles and tools in relation to the divergent thinking aspect of the CPS process were the most enjoyable to learn and rated the highest future …