Why not all people show minimal constructive behavior when they dis-identify from the group
Master thesis, MSc, specialization Human research management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
June 12, 2014
WORD COUNT (body text): 4351
1. ABSTRACT
Research in the field of dis-identification focusses on the causes of dis-identification and the consequences of dis-identification (in terms of behavior). The present correlational research expanded the existing knowledge by investigating the influences of dis-identification on creativity moderated by innovative cognitive style. Dis-identification is defined as a self-perception based on (1) a cognitive separation between one’s identity and one’s self-perception of the identity of an organization, and (2) a negative relational categorization of oneself and the organization. Creativity is defined as products, ideas, or procedures that satisfy two conditions: (1) they are novel or original and (2) they are potentially relevant for, or useful to, an
organization. The last construct, cognitive style, is a natural or preferred way of problem solving that can vary from adaptive to innovative. The results show that innovative cognitive style had a significant effect on creativity. Dis-identification was only marginal significant related to creativity.
2. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays creativity and innovation are important topics. In an interview with the Financial Times, professor Mark Pagel (2013 December 27) states that humans can hardly keep up with all the technological innovations. Although we use a lot of the new technologies we have no idea how it is made. Think about the iPad with touchscreen or the countless apps available on the market, who would have imagined that five years ago.
Innovation is all about making new things and it requires a lot of creativity. A lot of newspapers and researches write about creativity. Idris Motee said in the Financial Times that managers today need creativity, as they deal with disruptive technologies and breakneck competition (2013 September 15). In the literature you can find a lot of studies who investigate concepts that influences creativity. Woodman, Sawyer and Griffin (1993) mention the
importance of explaining human behavior, and then especially creativity, in social settings. They explained the human behavior by investigating which individual-, group- and
organization characteristics influence creativity. Amabile (1983) also investigated concepts that influence creativity. She expanded the literature with three components that are necessary for creative performance: domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant skills and task-motivation.
The present study will focus on a contextual social setting that is expected to influence the creativity of an individual moderated by a relevant creativity skill. Mark Pagel (2013
Amabile (1983) and Woodman et al. (1993) mention the important influence of cognitive styles for creativity. Following the Oxford dictionary (January 19, 2014) cognition is the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses. I will take into account the influence of one cognitive style in the relationship between dis-identification and creativity, namely the innovative cognitive style (Kirton, 1976). But first of all we need to know more about the theoretical background of the different concepts that are central in this question. I will first introduce the concept of dis-identification.
2.1 Dis-identification
A lot of literature focused on organizational dis-identification (DiSanza & Bullis, 1999; Elsbach & Bhattacharya, 2001; Kreiner & Ashforth, 2004; Pratt, 2000). Elsbach and
Bhattacharya (2001: 393) define organizational dis-identification as self-perception based on (1) a cognitive separation between one’s identity and one’s perception of the identity of an organization, and (2) a negative relational categorization of oneself and the organization. The identity of the organization contains of the organization's mission, culture, or centrally defining aspects (Kreiner & Ashforth, 2004). Pratt (2000: 463) found that employees who were excited by their dreams and knew that they had to change themselves to achieve their dreams
2.2 Constructive behavior
People working in a group can deviate from the norms of the reference group. This deviance can be constructive or destructive (Galperin, 2012; Warren, 2003). There are two streams of research on deviance in the management literature, one on its positive effects, that is the constructive behavior, and one on its negative effects, that is the destructive behavior (Warren, 2003: 622). Constructive behavior is behavior that deviates from the norms of the reference group, and the behavior is in such a way that it benefits the reference group and that the behavior conforms to hypernorms (Warren, 2003).
Vadera et al. (2013) presented an overview of constructive behaviors like taking charge, creative performance, expressing voice, whistle-blowing, extra-role behaviors, pro-social behaviors, pro-social rule breaking, counter-role behaviors, and issue selling. The main constructive behavior that will be tested in this research is creative performance. I will make use of the definition of Oldham and Cummings (1996: 608). They define creativity as:
“products, ideas, or procedures that satisfy two conditions: (1) they are novel or original and (2) they are potentially relevant for, or useful to, an organization.”
Vadera and Pratt (2013: 179) establish that “dis-identification leads to self-enhancement through disassociation with the organization and the creation of negative distinctiveness”. They note that mild forms of identification are not problematic but when someone is strongly dis-identified he or she will show negative emotions and do harmful actions. Thus, Vadera and Pratt (2013) mention that dis-identification can have negative effects for the organization. Ashforth and Mael (1988) (cf. Kreiner & Ashforth, 2004: 3) say that dis-identification might, in fact, lead to ultimately helpful behaviors such as whistle-blowing, innovation, and
word ‘might’, so they do not mention that dis-identification always leads to constructive behavior. They also mention in their article that dis-identification can have harmful effects to the organization. Because there is no empirical research, the question remains if someone who does not identify should show more or less creative behavior than someone who does dis-identify with the group.
Hypothesis 1: Dis-identified employees will show less creative performance.
People are different in the way they perceive things, they judge things and the things they can remember (Kunda, 1999:4). Therefore, we also take into account a cognitive style that is expected to influences creativity: an innovative cognitive style. First of all I will go into the literature to see what is already known about innovative cognitive style.
2.3 Innovative cognitive style
There is evidence that your cognitive style effects your creativity (James & Asmus, 2001; Kirton, 1976; Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004). Cognitive style dimensions are expected to affect individuals’ creativity by influencing the extent to which they apply various strategies that may facilitate creative idea production (Shalley et al., 2004).
things differently. Vadera et al. (2013) argue that an innovative cognitive style is positive related with constructive behavior. But there is still no empirical evidence. Amabile (1983), a well acknowledged researcher in the literature on cognitive styles and creativity, says the same as Vadera et al. (2013). Namely, she says that an innovative cognitive style is a relevant skill to show creative behavior.
Hypothesis 2: innovative cognitive style moderates the relationship between dis-identification and creativity, such that this relationship is weaker among employees with a strong innovative cognitive style compared to employees with adaptive cognitive style.
3. METHOD
In this section there will be explained how we tested our hypothesis and which sample we used to measure our hypothesis. Thereby the different scales of the constructs will be given and explained.
3.1 Research setting
This study of the influence of dis-identification on creativity was a correlational research. The relationship between dis-identification and creativity was investigated with a survey study. The surveys were sent by email to 200 employees of a municipality in
All the respondents worked at the same municipality to ensure that this research was more reliable. Because there worked mostly Netherlands employees at the municipality the survey was translated into Dutch. This was done with four people whereby the first one
translated the questionnaire from English to Dutch, the second one translated it back to English and the third one translated it again back to Dutch. After that procedure the fourth person compared the two in Dutch translated questionnaires and tried to find differences and compared it with the original English questionnaire. In this way the most reliable translation was found. 3.2 Participants
The data of this correlational research was analyzed with SPSS. Based on the analyses of the data the following picture of the participant was made. Of the 200 employees sent this study’s survey, 95 returned them and 80 (of this returned surveys) were useful, yielding a 40% useful response rate. Of the respondents 5 were supervisor; 29 were male, 39 were female, and there were 12 missing values. This sample included a wide range of ages and working hours. The ages were more right skewed with an average age of 49.5 years old. The average count of working hours was 32 hours a week. In the survey, the following variables were measured: dis-identification, creative performance and innovative cognitive style. To ensure this research was reliable and valid only existing scales were used. All constructs were measured with a five-point scale ranging from 1, "strongly disagree" to 5, "strongly agree”.
3.3 Measuring dis-identification
Dis-identification was tested with the scale provided by Täuber, Sassenberg, and Van der Vegt (2014). The questionnaire has been presented in Appendix 1. There were three
withdrawal (e.g., I come to the decision to only do what is essential for me as a member of this group). The last subscale contained of two questions that measure participant’s satisfaction with their group membership (e.g., Being a member of this group satisfies me). The scores on the questions six and eleven were reversed. The Cronbach alpha of this variable scale was .83. 3.4 Measuring creative performance:
For testing creative performance the scale of Zhou and George (2001) was used. This scale consisted of 3 questions from Scott and Bruce (1994), and 10 items developed for the study of Zhou and George. The questionnaire is presented in Appendix 2. A high score on the questions means that someone is very creative. Originally, the scale was written in a way that a supervisor indicated how characteristic each of the 13 behaviors is for the employee. For the present research, the employees were instructed to think about how their supervisor would rate them. The Cronbach alpha of this variable scale was .81.
3.5 Measuring innovative cognitive style:
For testing the innovative cognitive style of the employee there were three possible scales that have been widely-used in organizational and educational contexts: the intuition-analysis scale, the adaptor-innovator inventory scale (KAI) and the Wholist-analytical scale (Smith & Badger, 2007). Because the primary assumption of the KAI is that people have a preferred way of dealing with change and creativity (Smith & Badger, 2007), this scale was most aligned with the purpose of this study.
Originally the Kirton’s (1976, 1984) Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI) items were divided in three factors: originality (compromises 13 items), rule/group conformity
factor as predictor for innovative cognitive style was satisfactory (Bagozzi & Foxall, 1995). Therefore, only the 13 items of originality of the KAI were used in this study. The scores on the questions nine and twelve were reversed. The KAI can be found in appendix 3.
A high score on the questions indicates a more innovative cognitive style and a low score on the questions a more adaptive cognitive style. The score of the KAI was obtained by counting the responses of the 13-items together (Kirton, 1976, 1984, 1994). Thus, theoretically, KAI scores can range from 13 till 65. A lot of different studies and a lot of different authors in different countries found that the over-all scale of the KAI was internally reliable with a Cronbach alpha between .85 and .90 (Clapp, 1993). The KAI was significantly correlated with gender and age (Kirton, 1976). In this way that men are more innovative than women and that younger people have a higher score on innovative cognitive style than older people. In this research the Cronbach alpha of this construct was .91.
4. RESULTS
In this chapter an outlining of the method used to test the hypothesis is given. The Cronbachs alpha’s were already given and they showed that the three constructs were reliable. In this section the results of the correlation analysis will be presented and the mean and standard deviations of the three constructs are indicated. After that the results of the regression analysis are given.
4.1 Descriptive analysis.
p < .05). This means that men showed more creative performance than women. Therefore the gender-effect is included in the analyses. There were no further significant correlations between the control variables and the constructs. The overall mean and standard deviation for the three main variables, dis-identification, creativity and innovative cognitive style, were as follows: M = 2.21, SD = .54; M = 3.57, SD = .45; M = 3.55, SD = .41. A one-way-anova showed that there was a significantly difference between the creativity of women and men (F[1,66] =4.16, p < .05). Therefore the mean and standard deviation of creativity were separately analyzed for men and women with an independent t-test. The mean and standard deviation for men were M = 3.07, SD =.46; and for women M = 3.48, SD = .42.
4.2 Moderation Analysis
A regression analysis was conducted to test the moderation hypothesis. Because gender correlated significantly with creativity this effect was included in the analyses. There was one dependent variable, creativity, there were two independent variables, dis-identification and innovative cognitive style, and there were four interaction-effects: interaction between dis-identification and innovative cognitive style, interaction between dis-dis-identification and gender, interaction between innovative cognitive style and gender, and interaction between all three independent variables: dis-identification, innovative cognitive style and gender. The results of this analysis showed that the addition of the four interaction variables had no significant effect on the explained variance of creativity. The separate interactions were also not significant. This means that there is also no moderation effect of innovative cognitive style on the relationship between dis-identification and creativity.
variance (R2 = .46, F(3,64) = 19.92, p < .001). Only the effect of innovative cognitive style on creativity was significant (p < .001, β = .66). The effect of dis-identification on creativity revealed a non-significant trend in the predicted direction (p = .15, β = -.13)
5. DISCUSSION
This research examined the relationship between dis-identification and behavior, and then specifically creative behavior. How far the results confirm the hypothesis and literature will be explained in this section. Furthermore, some practical implications for the municipalities, where this research was done, will be given.
As shown in the result section, gender correlated negatively with creativity. This means that men are more creative than women. In the literature are evident a lot of contradictions about the relation between creativity and gender (Baer & Kaufman , 2008). So, from that perspective there is not one valid explanation for the influence of gender on creativity. But there could be another explanation. The theoretical background outlined that cognitive style is expected to affect individuals’ creativity (Shalley et al., 2004). Because the KAI is significantly correlated with gender and age (Kirton, 1976), it could be that therefor creativity was
significantly correlated with gender. Notwithstanding, after the regression-analysis we found that gender had not a significant effect on the model we investigated. So we did not take into account the influence of gender on creativity.
Before the description whether the hypothesis is rejected or accepted the hypothesis will be displayed again: Hypothesis 1: Dis-identified employees will show less creative
dis-identification and creativity. This negative relationship corresponds with the findings of Vadera and Pratt (2013) who mentioned that dis-identification leads to the creation of negative
distinctiveness. Nevertheless, in this research the relationship between dis-identification and creativity was marginally significant. So, our first hypothesis is only partly supported.
Because there was no empirical evidence in the literature to answer the question ‘would someone who does dis-identify show more or less creative behavior than someone who does not identify with the group?’, this partly support for the existing relationship between dis-identification and creativity, can be the start of further research.
The second hypothesis investigated in this research was: Innovative cognitive style moderates the relationship between dis-identification and creativity, such that this relationship is weaker among employees with a strong innovative cognitive style compared to employees with adaptive cognitive style. The purpose of this research was to find if there is some deviance in behavior if someone is dis-identified. Results indicated that almost fifty percent of the variance in creative behavior is determined by dis-identification, cognitive style and their interaction. However, the interaction between dis-identification and cognitive style had nearly effect on the variance of creativity because the interaction-effect was not significant. Therefore the second hypothesis is rejected.
Asmus, 2001; Kirton, 1976; Shalley, Zhou, & Oldham, 2004). They said that cognitive style dimensions influence the way of applying various strategies (Shalley et al., 2004).
The findings of this research can be meaningful for the municipality to some extent. There is a general elaboration in Holland to delegate more tasks from the central government to the municipalities. Therefor the policy of the municipalities change in a fast pace. More and more municipalities change their culture from working with specialists to working with generalists. This trend is also reflected at municipalities in Groningen (Vlachtwedde, 2013; Groningen, 2013).To innovate and change the culture and organization you need creative people. If the municipality needs creative people they should choose the employees with an innovative cognitive style because these employees show significantly more creativity. The same relationships and practical implications of that could be true for other organizations. But we cannot easy generalize the results because this research has some limitations. These limitations will be established in the next section together with some positive points of this research.
6. LIMITATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH
There are a few limitations we have to concern according to this research. This research is done at a non-commercial institution. Therefore the findings of this research are not plainly
applicable to commercial organizations. If this research was done at a commercial organization it could be that the results were different, because commercial and non-commercial
bureaucratic than non-commercial organizations whereby employees at commercial
organizations have more possibilities to determine their own strategy. Another limitation of this research is the small number of respondents. Due to the small number of respondents, there is only one significant relationship between the variables. The small number of respondents is partly the result of a lot of control variables. Employees did not had the feeling that their
answers on the questionnaire where anonymous. Especially the combination of age and number of years worked turned thereby to be decisive. Another reason for the small number of
respondents was the short time, of two weeks’, to fill in the questionnaire. The third limitation that is important to mention is that it was not possible to establish causal relationships into a correlational study. So, it is possible that creativity effects dis-identification instead of the other way around. Finally, it is also unknown if there were self-reporting effects. It could be that women were more cautious in assessing their creativity than men were.
Alongside the limitations, there are also some positive points to be identified. The scales that are used are already used by a lot of other researches and their validity and reliability is proven over time. Therefore the Cronbachs alpha’s of the different scales were really high. Another positive point is the translation of the questionnaire. Because of the comprehensive translation of the questionnaire we could ensure that the questionnaire was a good
representation of the original questionnaire.
and now we know that gender had significant influence on creativity there could be
investigated if this was the result of self-reporting effects, or that men have more possibilities to behave creative than women or if men and women really differ in creativity.
7. CONCLUSION
In this research we first of all stated that creativity is a hot topic these days. A lot of world changing products are invented and we cannot imagine a day without these inventions. For example ‘smartphones’. Creativity is also important in social settings. In this study the social setting was a municipality in Groningen. The central question of these study was ‘What
happens with the creativity of an employee when he or she dis-identifies himself with the social setting?’. This was an important question because innovation is the result of knowledge and inventions of more than one person. To investigate this question we had two hypotheses. The first hypothesis was aimed to test if dis-identified people show less creative performance. This hypothesis is only partly supported. In the context of the purpose of this study it means that dis-identified people will show less creativity in a social setting like group work.
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9. APPENDICES
Appendix 1 – Dis-identification
Behavioral intentions regarding physically exiting the group 1. I doubt that I will remain in this group for long.
2. I am thinking about leaving this group.
3. I am thinking about backing out of this group. 4. I will definitely leave this group.
5. I will leave this group as soon as possible.
6. I will definitely remain a member of this group. (reverse coded) Cognitive exit from the group withdrawal
7. I come to the decision to only do what is essential for me as a member of this group. 8. I attend my tasks in the group in such a way that my potential is not fully exhausted. 9. I reduce my load by diminishing my commitment to the group.
10. I do what I have to do in the group, but without great dedication. Satisfaction with group membership
11. Being a member of this group satisfies me. (reverse coded) 12. Spending time with this group dissatisfies me.
Appendix 2 – Creative Performance Scale ‘I think that my supervisor would say that’
1. I suggest new ways to achieve goals or objectives.
2. I come up with new and practical ideas to improve performance.
6. I am not afraid to take risks.
7. I promote and champion ideas to others."
8. I exhibit creativity on the job when given the opportunity to.
9. I develop adequate plans and schedules for the implementation of new ideas." 10. I often have new and innovative ideas.
11. I come up with creative solutions to problems. 12. I often have a fresh approach to problems. 13. I suggest new ways of performing work tasks.
Appendix 3 – Kirton’s Adaption Innovation Inventory (KAI) (Emsley, Nevicky, & Harrison, 2006)
Originality
1. I stimulate new ideas 2. I proliferate new ideas
3. I can cope with several new ideas at the same time 4. I always think of something when stuck
5. I feel happy to create rather than improve 6. I provide fresh perspectives on old problems 7. I risk doing things differently
8. I like to vary set routines at a moment’s notice
9. I prefer to work on one problem at a time – reversed coded 10. I feel able to disagree within a group
11. I need the stimulation of frequent change
