T
RANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP
,
POSITIVE HUMOUR AND
CREATIVITY AND INNOVATIVENESS
Dennis van Klaveren
1924206
University of Groningen
MSc BA Strategic Innovation Management
3 July 2014
Table of contents
Introduction ... 3
2 Literature review ... 5
3 Hypotheses & Conceptual Model ... 10
4 Research Methods ... 13
4.1 Measures ... 13 4.2 Setup ... 14 4.3 Data collection ... 15 4.4 Data analysis ... 165 Results ... 20
5.1 Descriptive statistics ... 20 5.2 Correlation matrix ... 22 5.3 Regression analysis ... 24 5.4 Hypotheses ... 276 Conclusions ... 29
6.1 Discussion and theoretical implications ... 29
6.2 Managerial implications ... 30
6.3 Limitations and suggestions for future research ... 30
References ... 32
Appendix A: Scale selection for Transformational Leadership and Positive Emotions ... 37
Appendix B: Original scales ... 39
Appendix C: Altered and left out items for questionnaire ... 42
Appendix D: Final questionnaire ... 43
Appendix E: Factor analysis of independent variables ... 50
Appendix F: Factor analysis of dependent variables ... 52
Appendix G: Cronbach’s alpha if items deleted and descriptive statistics for Bisociative
thinking ... 54
Appendix H: Cronbach’s Alpha of all variables ... 55
Appendix I: QQ-‐plots, histograms, leaf and stems, and test of normality for Age and
Tenure ... 56
Abstract
This research analyses if transformational leadership and managers’ positive emotions have a positive influence on followers’ positive emotions and their creativity and innovativeness. The results are based on 110 filled out questionnaires set out within a large airliner as well as a large non-‐profit organisation. Findings suggest that the use of positive humour by managers has positive effects on followers’ creativity and innovativeness. In addition, transformational leadership is suggested to positively influence followers’ positive emotions, which in turn improve followers’ creativity and innovativeness.
Introduction
Humour is used in many situations throughout an organization. Research has shown a significant relationship between humour and creativity, and has shown that creative people have a well-‐developed sense of humour (Ziv, 1984; Berger, 1992). According to Romero and Cruthirds (2006) humour can contribute to effective management of personnel, more specifically enhance creativity. In addition, they note that there is evidence that humour is linked to creative thinking and that humour has a positive effect on creative problem solving. Creativity is often perceived as a means of innovation from a managerial perspective (McAdam & McClelland, 2002). According to Amabile (1996) creativity is the production of novel and useful ideas in any domain, whereas innovation is the successful implementation of these creative ideas within an organization. Commentary in the organisation sciences has considered the role of workplace humour (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). However, there is still limited extant literature discussing the role of humour in the social influence process of leadership (Hughes, 2009).
A growing body of work has been dedicated to the importance of creativity and innovation as an outcome of the leader-‐follower relationship. In this relationship, a transformational leadership style is suggested to be inspirational, and more supportive for risk-‐taking, creativity, and innovation (Holmes and Morra, 2006). Transformational leaders use a personalized style by which they espouse their values, effectively communicate their visions, inspire follower innovation, and connect individually with followers (Hughes, 2009).
Avolio et al. (1999) found that transformational leadership has a direct positive relation with the use of humour. There is a natural social distance between leaders and their followers and research suggests that having a sense of humour at work, or perhaps employing humour techniques, will narrow this social distance, boost productivity and increase creativity (Hughes, 2009).
Romero and Cruthirds (2006) mention that to enhance creativity, managers should adopt self-‐ enhancing and affiliative humour styles to increase creativity. In addition, Dechesne (2013) shows that there is support for the relation between positive humour (self-‐ enhancing and affiliative humour styles) and creativity and innovativeness.
Positive humour is suggested to produce positive emotions (Martin et al. 1993; Romero & Cruthirds, 2006). Positive emotions tend to broaden the ability of thoughts in ones mind, which in turn gives the ability to choose out of more actions. This means that positive emotions can promote discovery of novel and creative actions or ideas (Fredrickson, 2004). This research will analyse if a leader’s use of positive humour is important to key workplace outcomes such as positive emotions, creativity and innovativeness. This research analyses whether a transformational leadership style has a positive effect on followers’ positive emotions and creativity and innovativeness. In addition, the influence of managers’ humour style on followers’ positive emotions and creativity and innovativeness is analysed.
interrelations with transformational leadership, positive emotions, creativity and innovativeness. Secondly, this research will solidify the use of various scales and test their reliability and validity. Thirdly, this research will quantitatively analyse the relations
between a transformational leadership style, managers’ positive humour styles, followers’ positive emotions, and followers’ creativity and innovativeness. Finally, this research will identify managerial implications and provide suggestions for future research.
2 Literature review
In this section, humour, transformational leadership, positive emotions, and creativity and innovativeness will be described based on existing literature.
Humour
Humour is commonly understood as a positive emotion and laughter. As determined in previous literature, there is not a single global definition of humour due to the complex and multifaceted nature of humour (Murdock and Ganim, 1993). This research will focus on the aspect of humour that occurs between two individuals within an organisation. In previous literature, the distinction was made between positive and negative humour (Dechesne, 2013). Positive humour consists of affiliative and self-‐enhancing humour, whereas negative humour consists of self-‐deprecating and aggressive humour.
Affiliative humour
This is a positive non-‐hostile style of humour that is used to initiate or enhance relationships (Martin et al., 2003). This style of humour can be used to put others at ease. People that have this style of humour are also likely to engage in self-‐defeating humour, saying funny things about themselves and not taking themselves overly seriously, while maintaining a sense of self-‐acceptance (Vaillant, 1977).
Self-‐enhancing humour
This style is used by people who have a humorous outlook on life, which enables them to laugh about themselves and the anomalies of life (Martin et al., 2003). Research has found that this humour style positively related to favourable emotions (Romero & Cruthirds, 2006).
Self-‐defeating humour
Others can use this style to gain acceptance at the expense of oneself. It is used to please others by being the butt of the joke (Martin et al., 2003). It can be used to put oneself on the same level -‐ equalizing between leader and
follower (Hughes, 2009).
Aggressive humour
Aggressive humour is a negative style of humour that has the underlying intent to harm or belittle others (Martin et al., 2003). Using this style, leaders can poke fun at focal actors in a social situation (Hughes, 2009). This type of humour can come in the form of sarcasm, ridicule, criticism, and other types of humour that are detrimental to others.
Definitions of humour are often integrated with the domain of creativity and can even be considered a subset of creativity (Murdock and Ganim, 1993). Previous literature suggests that there is a positive relation between positive humour (affiliative and self-‐enhancing humour) and creativity and innovativeness (Dechesne, 2013). Accordingly, this research will focus on positive humour, which will be referred to as: “amusing communications that produce positive emotions and cognitions in the individual” based on the definition of humour by Romero and Cruthirds’ (2006). To get a better understanding of the underlying concept of humour, the basic theories of humour will be described.
Humour theories
Humour consists of many components and this makes it very hard to form a single definition or theory that can accurately describe it. Many theorists have tried to define the core of humour, but there still is no precise description of it. There are three basic theories; arousal-‐, incongruent-‐, and superiority theory, which are important in understanding the concept of humour as a whole.
Arousal theory
humour causes laughter that reduces built-‐up tension. An early version of this theory includes laughter as being pleasure mixed with pain. Modern discussions include Freud’s (1963) theory of humour being a defence mechanism against unpleasant emotions.
Incongruent theory
Arousal tells why things can be funny while incongruent theory tells us what is funny about the structure of the joke. The basis for this theory is that in order for something to be funny it must be somewhat unexpected, illogical, or inappropriate (Meyer, 1997). Also known as bisociation, two normally unconnected frames of reference that are brought together in a surprising or unexpected manner is what makes a good joke funny (Koestler, 1964). An example can be a punch line of a joke that makes sense based on the information that was given earlier on in the joke.
Superiority theory
The principle of most humour theories is based on either a sense of our own superiority or a sense of inferiority of others (Hughes, 2009). This theory holds that users derive pleasure from another’s misfortune without experiencing any cognitive dissonance or social implications. Forms of humour that are in line with theory include sarcasm, irony, imitation, and satire (Berger, 1992).
These theories show that humour can be used to achieve a sense of superiority and to reduce tension, but also to find ways to connect seemingly unrelated things with each other, showing that creativity is involved.
Transformational Leadership
According to Podsakoff et al. (1990), transformational leadership can be summarized by six types of behaviour; identifying and articulating a vision, providing an appropriate model, fostering the acceptance of group goals, high performance expectations, providing
individualised support to follower and intellectual stimulation. Carless et al. (2000) adapted these six types into seven by distinguishing between supporting followers in general as well as their individual development. In addition, they apply the broader concept of charisma. These seven types of behaviour encompass the concept of transformational leadership:
1. Communicates a vision 2. Develops followers 3. Provides support 4. Empowers followers 5. Is innovative
6. Leads by example 7. Is charismatic. Vision
Transformational leaders repeatedly communicate a vision to their followers. By doing so, leaders communicate a set of values and instil motivation to their followers (Carless et al. 2000).
Follower development
Effective leaders facilitate and encourage the personal development of their followers (Bass, 1985). Leaders facilitate the development of new skills and provide challenging opportunities for their followers.
Providing support
Leaders have to express confidence in the abilities of their followers to perform effectively and achieve challenging goals. This includes giving positive feedback to followers and giving recognition of individual as well as team goals (Nadler and Tushman, 1990).
Empowerment
communication and cooperation, which in turn facilitates a cooperative, participative group climate (Carless et al. 2000).
Innovative thinking
Effective leaders use innovative and sometimes unconventional strategies to achieve goals (Bass, 1985). Leaders are willing to take risk and give their followers challenging opportunities. This will often result in mistakes; however, these can be seen as learning opportunities.
Lead by example
Transformational leaders show consistency between their articulated views and behaviour. Effective leaders clearly communicate their believes to followers. These leaders express confidence and can be seen as role models for followers (Bass, 1985).
Charisma
Bass (1985) argues that charismatic leadership is one of the most important qualities of transformational leadership. Charismatic leaders are perceived as trustworthy, highly competent and worthy of respect (Bass and Avolio, 1990).
Hughes (2009) states the importance of innovation and creativity as an outcome of the leader-‐follower relationship. Mumford et al. (2002) argue that if one role leaders play is helping people define the problems that are worth pursuing, it seems reasonable to conclude that vision-‐based leadership might also represent a noteworthy influence on creativity and innovation.
Positive emotions
Emotions have an object, or signify some thing (e.g., occurrence), and involve an appraisal process that triggers response tendencies such as subjective experiences, physiological changes and facial expressions. Fredrickson (2003) suggests with her broaden-‐and-‐build theory that positive emotions broaden the scopes of
attention and cognition, and, by consequence, initiate upward spirals toward increasing emotional well-‐being. The broaden concept is suggested to expand people’s thought-‐action repertoires, which enables them to explore new approaches to thought and action, or broadening of attention and cognition. The
build concept refers to the ability of a person to
develop its intellectual-‐, psychological-‐, or social resources. Previous research has found support for the relation between positive emotions and broadened cognitions, which trigger the upward spiral toward emotional well-‐being (Fredrickson and Joiner, 2002). Positive emotions enlarge the cognitive context and produce thought patterns that are flexible and creative. In addition, empirical evidence supports the finding that positive emotions characterize transformational leadership mainly due to the notion that leaders develop the potential of followers (Bass and Avolio, 1994).
Creativity
Creativity is important for organisations in order to come up with new ideas for products or services as well as solving problems encountered during work. There exist several definitions for the term creativity, this research will use the definition suggested by Amabile et al. (2005): “coming up with fresh ideas for changing products, services, and processes so as to better achieve the organisation’s goals”. Ziv (1976) found that humour boosted the results of a creativity test among adolescents after having listened to a humorous record. Humke and Schaefer (1996) found a significant positive association of creativity and a sense of humour. Amabile (1996) argues that there are three components of creativity, namely: expertise, creative thinking, and task motivation.
Expertise
proficiency, and special talents in the work domain (Amabile, 1996). This expertise can be seen as different pathways to solve a problem, or perform a given task. Expertise creates a so-‐ called network of possibilities.
Creative thinking skills
This component increases the creative performance of an individual. It determines how flexible and imaginatively an individual can approach a problem (Amabile, 1996). This component is needed to make good use of one’s expertise on a certain task. The creative thinking skills are needed to connect seemingly unrelated things to take new perspectives on problems and to explore new cognitive pathways. This is similar to the process found with the incongruent theory of humour (Koestler, 1964), where two things are brought together in a surprising manner.
Task motivation
An individual’s capabilities are described by the previous two components. What an individual will actually do is determined by this last component of creativity. Therefore, motivation is the most important component of creativity. Motivation can take two forms, intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is driven by deep interest and involvement in the work, by curiosity, enjoyment, or a personal sense of challenge. Extrinsic motivation is driven by the desire to attain some goal that is apart from the work itself. Amabile (1996) states that a primarily intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity more than a primarily extrinsic motivation. Organisations can therefore have an impact on creativity by influencing motivation. Research has found that higher levels of task motivation and positive affect were evident for those individuals with a greater sense of humour (Kuiper et al. 1995).
Innovation
Innovation is needed to increase the long-‐term survival, profitability and growth of
organisations. Most innovation models consist of several stages for successful innovation (Cooper, 1998). These stages roughly are investigation/idea generation, product development, and product launch. In between these stages exists screening and reflecting on the innovation process. This research focuses on individual innovativeness and therefore requires a different approach than organisational innovativeness. The set of behaviours to be an innovative individual are combined in the measure for Innovative Work Behaviour. Janssen (2000) defines innovative work behaviour as “the intentional creation, introduction and application of new ideas within a work role, group or organisation”. Innovative work behaviour was found to lead to innovative output in De Jong & Den Hartog (2010). Innovative work behaviour can be split in three stages similar to the general innovation process.
Idea generation
Innovation starts with the generation of ideas. An employee needs to produce new and useful ideas to start the innovation process. The ability to do so depends on this individuals’ creativity. Therefore as described earlier, humour can play a role in this phase. In addition, positive emotions and transformational leadership can play an important part of this phase by initiating creative thoughts.
Idea promotion
If an idea is found appropriate to solve a problem or initiate a new process, the idea must be promoted to create a base of supporters of the idea. Key players of the organisation must champion the idea and find support and funding for its realisation. Transformational leadership could instil empowerment and thus give followers the motivation to find support for their ideas.
Idea realisation
The idea will be converted from a thought or concept to an actual process or product. In order to successfully implement an idea the cooperation of various departments and approval on different hierarchical levels is needed (Anderson & King, 1993). The realisation requires the support of others similar to the promotion phase. As mentioned earlier, transformational leadership can provide
support to the innovative work behaviour of followers. In addition, humour can reduce the social distance between different hierarchical levels and improve relationships. Moreover, positive emotions can trigger an upward spiral where followers are more creative and develop its’ social resources.
3 Hypotheses & Conceptual Model
The following section describes the different variables used in this research. The relation between different concepts will be hypothesized and at the end a conceptual model will be made.
Transformational Leadership
Transformational Leadership is often seen as style where leaders encourage creativity and innovation, and are characterized as inspirational (Holmes & Marra, 2006). Leadership is proposed to exist orthogonally along two dimensions: quality and style. Along the quality dimension, leadership can be considered effective (good) or ineffective (bad). What effectiveness means is determined by the outcomes desired. For example, an effective leader in terms of worker performance can motivate followers thus compelling them to complete a series of tasks to an optimal outcome. On the other hand, an ineffective leader is not able to motivate followers to produce the desired quantity of output. Similarly, an effective leader who can compel followers to feel happier in their work is in contrast with the ineffective leader who angers followers. Therefore, the outcome a leader attempts to elicit from followers determines precisely how effectiveness is defined.
Style of leadership refers to the category in which fall leader behaviours, and follower attributions of these behaviours. Transformational leaders use a personalized style by which they espouse their values, effectively communicate their visions, inspire follower innovation, and connect individually with followers. The linkage between leadership and both innovation and follower emotions has been well established in the extant literature (Hughes, 2009). When connecting with follower, it is suggested that leaders use humour to create positive emotions and inspire follower innovation.
H1: Transformational leadership has a positive effect on followers’ positive emotions.
H2: Transformational leadership has a positive effect on followers’ creativity and innovativeness. Positive emotions
Emotions are a conscious or unconscious multi-‐ component response tendency that evolve and manifest over relatively short periods of time (Fredrickson, 2003). Fredrickson (1998) discusses a broaden-‐and-‐build theory that describes the broadening of people’s thought-‐ action repertoires that enables them to explore novel approaches to thought and action, or the broadening of attention and cognition. The build component refers to the person’s ability to develop various personal resources (e.g., intellectual, psychological, physical and social). Emotions have the ability to broaden people’s momentary though-‐action repertoires, widening the array of thoughts and actions that come to mind (Fredrickson, 2003). Empirical evidence supports that positive emotions characterize human leadership style, particularly transformational leadership, was constructed on the notion that leaders develop the potential of followers (Bass & Avolio, 1994). In addition, positive emotions enlarge the cognitive context and therefore produce thought patterns that are both flexible and creative (Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002 and Isen, 1987). Thus:
H3: Followers’ positive emotions have a positive effect on followers’ creativity and innovativeness. Humour
(Vaillant, 1977). Previously, Ruch (1993) hypothesized that humour has a positive effect on exhilaration and joy (positive emotions) that, in turn, have an effect on creativity. Furthermore, researchers have found evidence of mediation in that students who were more anxious performed better on multiple-‐choice examinations after exposure to written humour (Smith et al., 1971).
H4a: A managers’ affiliative humour has a positive effect on followers’ positive emotions. Self-‐enhancing humour is used by people who have a humorous outlook on life, which enables them to laugh about themselves and the anomalies of life (Martin et al., 2003). This style is also positively related to favourable emotions according to Romero & Cruthirds (2006). As this research uses a follower-‐reported scale for humour, this style is adapted to an other-‐ enhancing humour style. This will be elaborated in section 4, the altered items can be found in Appendix C.
H4b: A managers’ other enhancing humour has a positive effect on followers’ positive emotions. Although humour is not an emotion, it is suggested that affect is manipulated by humour (Moore & Isen, 1990). The impact is rarely profound, but humour is suggested to alter emotion states. To analyse this relation I hypothesize:
H5a: A managers’ affiliative humour has a positive moderating effect on the relation between transformational leadership and followers’ positive emotions.
H5b: A managers’ other-‐enhancing humour has a positive moderating effect on the relation between transformational leadership and followers’ positive emotions.
Creativity and innovativeness
Creativity and innovation are not new topics and have been studied extensively in the
behavioural sciences. However, little work has been done within the context of leader-‐follower relationships. This is unexpected because innovation and creativity have been offered as important performance outcomes for organisations (Lei & Slocum, 2005). Other relevant work includes the discovery that creativity ratings correlated with effective, leader-‐follower exchange relationships (Tierney et al., 1999).
H6a: A managers’ affiliative humour has a positive effect on followers’ creativity and innovativeness.
H6b: A managers’ other-‐enhancing humour has a positive effect on followers’ creativity and innovativeness.
Research has found that humour has a moderating role in the relation between transformational leadership and individual performance. (Avolio et al. 1999) By using humour, transformational leaders can create a more amiable atmosphere at work, which can enhance creative interactions and overall performance of their followers.
H7a: A managers’ affiliative humour has a positive moderating influence on the relation between transformational leadership and creativity and innovativeness.
H7b: A managers’ other-‐enhancing humour has a positive moderating influence on the relation between transformational leadership and creativity and innovativeness.
Control variables
The dependent variables are controlled for by including variables on several socio-‐ demographic characteristics that are included as control variables in this research. These control variables are age, gender, tenure, company and department. Age, gender and department are commonly used control variables in research on creativity (Amabile et al, 2005; Carmeli & Schaubroeck, 2007). In
4 Research Methods
The following section will discuss the research methods used in this research. Firstly, the measurement scales used in this analysis will be described. Secondly, the setup of the research will be described. Moreover, the data collection and analysis will be described and the scales will be tested for reliability and go through factor analysis. Finally, several models will be made and will be used for regression analysis.
4.1 Measures
The measurements used for the research will be described below. Each measurement will be discussed and selected based on a selection of criteria.
Independent variables Transformational leadership
Transformational leadership is measured using the Global Transformational Leadership (GTL) scale as developed by Carless et al. (2000). The reason for choosing this scale instead of a more broad measure scale such as the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) is that in this research the focus is solely on transformational leadership and the scale consists of 7 items for the GTL versus 39 of the MLQ (Appendix A). In addition, the GTL highly correlates with the MLQ (Carless et al. 2000). Carless et al. (2000) argue that the GTL provides a broad assessment of transformational leadership and that it is a short scale that is easy to administer and value (Appendix B). In Carless et al. (2000) the Cronbach alpha was calculated as .93. The high alpha coefficient further supports the conclusion that the GTL is a reliable measure of transformational leadership. The reported high correlations between the GTL and other measures of transformational leadership suggest that the GTL is an alternative short measure of transformational leadership with a broad range of potential. Another measure with which it correlates is the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI). The LPI is a measurement tool for transformational leadership styles that assesses a more over-‐arching construct of transformational leadership (Carless, 2001).
Positive humour
Positive humour will be measured using the items for affiliative and self-‐enhancing humour of the Humour Style Questionnaire (HSQ). Validation data indicate that the first four scales differentially relate in predicted ways to peer ratings of humour styles and to measures of mood (cheerfulness, depression, anxiety, hostility), self-‐esteem, optimism, well-‐ being, intimacy, and social support (Martin et al. 2003). The HSQ has been applied in multiple studies and literature has found high internal validity, with Cronbach alpha’s ranging from .82 to .88 (Martin et al., 2003). The questionnaire will ask the followers’ perception of his or her managers’ humour style. The HSQ is usually a self-‐answered scale. However, since it now is about the perception of the follower, the scale has been altered to be able to capture the followers’ perception. In order to capture the same essence regarding the items measuring self-‐enhancing humour, the items were altered to ‘other-‐enhancing’ items of humour. These altered items try to capture to what extent the follower perceive that their managers use humour to enhance the followers situation or problems faced during work. The humour styles will be measured using 13 items. The altered items can be found in Appendix C.
Mediator variable Positive Emotions
used to assess moods for different time-‐periods. In this research, only the positive emotions are of interest and therefore only the brief measure of positive affect will be used, which consists of 10 items (Appendix B). The shorter scale highly correlated to the PANAS-‐X scale with a Cronbach’s alpha of .92 (Watson et al., 1988). The brief measurement is more desirable for this research to reduce the length of the questionnaire. Analyses have found that Positive Affect and Negative Affect are largely independent dimensions (Tellegen et al., 1999). Therefore, in this research only 10 items that will measure positive affect will be used.
Dependent variables
Followers’ creativity and innovativeness
The creativity and innovativeness of the follower will be measured using three different scales. Innovative Work Behaviour, Innovative Output, and Bisociative Thinking. The former two measure innovativeness whereas the latter measures creativity. The scales will measure independently and no items have been merged. These scales are used because they measure individual creativity and innovativeness and are relatively short scales. This is necessary for maintaining a short questionnaire, which will decrease the time to complete and the chance that respondents will completely fill out the questionnaire.
Innovative Work Behaviour
Innovative work behaviour will be measured using the IWB scale as found in De Jong & Den Hartog (2010). This scale consists of 10 items that measure one construct of innovation (Appendix B). This scale is originally supervisor-‐rated, but will be changed to a self-‐ reported scale. The opening sentence is changed from: “How often does this employee…” to “How often do you…”. The scale is used due to it being relatively short compared to the longer 17-‐item version that consists of items inspired by Janssen (2000), Kleysen and Street (2001) and Scott and Bruce (1994). In addition, it correlates significantly
with the longer version, which makes it the more suitable scale to use (De Jong & Den Hartog, 2010). The Cronbach alpha found in De Jong & Den Hartog (2010) for the original scale was .90, indicating a high internal validity.
Innovative Output
Innovative output will be measured using the scale found in De Jong & Den Hartog (2010). This scale consists of 6 items (Appendix B) with a Cronbach alpha of .82 for the original scale. It will measure if followers have suggestions for innovations, more ideas for change being put forward or more realised innovations, such as new products or processes. This scale can be used where more objective scales for innovation are unavailable. De Jong & Den Hartog (2010) found a positive relation between innovative output and innovative work behaviour.
Bisociative Thinking
Bisociative thinking is the act of combining seemingly unrelated matrices of information resulting in non-‐habitual thinking (Koestler, 1964). This is similar to the incongruent theory of humour mentioned in the literature review. Bisociative thinking will be measured using three strongest items correlating to the bisociative dimension of an index found in Jabri (1991). This method was also used in other research and had a sufficient internal validity with a Cronbach alpha averaging .77 (Dechesne, 2013, Blum et al., 2009). Additionally, this method is used to limit the total amount of items on the questionnaire.
4.2 Setup
questionnaire in less than 10 minutes. This was done to assure managers that it would not be very time-‐consuming and to encourage them to participate in spreading the questionnaire among their followers. In addition, the short questionnaire would increase the likelihood of followers finishing the questionnaire. The questionnaire is self-‐reported as followers themselves are in the best position to assess their creativity and innovative behaviour. They are aware of the subtleties of their suggestions and can better judge to what extent their ideas are creative or innovative (Ng & Feldman, 2012). A Self-‐reported measurement is often considered to cause bias, however, there is no empirical evidence for this. There is even some evidence that self-‐reported measures correlate with supervisor-‐ratings (.35) and objective measures of creativity (.33) (Ng & Feldman, 2012). To control for the order-‐effect bias, all items in the questionnaire are mixed and randomized (Goodhue & Loiocono, 2000). To control for the effects of acquiescence, the questionnaire includes some negative keyed items (Kaplan & Saccuzo, 2005).
4.3 Data collection
The questionnaire was carried out at a large multinational company active in the airline industry (X) awarded for having innovative mobile and online platforms in providing customer service. In addition, it was carried out at a large non-‐profit organisation (Y) claiming to stimulate innovation and being active in financially supporting innovative companies. These organisations are both located in the Netherlands. Multiple departments, including innovation, customer support, sales, and human resources were asked to fill out the questionnaire online through Qualtrics.
Pilot Questionnaire
Prior to the main research a pilot questionnaire was carried out. The three primary goals of this pre-‐test were to evaluate the length, quality and adequacy of the questionnaire (Iarossi, 2006).
Six employees from company X were randomly selected and asked to fill out the preliminary questionnaire. The web link to the pilot questionnaire was sent out via e-‐mail personally. The pilot questionnaire contained extra questions asking; (a) Were there any questions unclear? (b) What was unclear about it/them? (c) Do you have any general feedback or suggestions? This feedback was instantly received through Qualtrics, as well as the amount of time it took for respondents to finish the survey.
The respondents had positive responses regarding the clarity of the questions and the time it took to finish the questionnaire was well below the 10 minutes I had set for it. There was one minor point of criticism that regarded stars I had put behind questions to indicate that they were reversed questions. In the final questionnaire these stars were removed.
Procedure
followers increased the total to 85 completed questionnaires. In the week thereafter there was a steady increase until the final number of completed questionnaires counted 110. At this time there was no more time left to attain more data. The response rate of the contacted followers was therefore roughly 68%.
4.4 Data analysis
The data was analysed using IBM SPSS version 20. The results of the questionnaires of company X and Y were saved and imported to SPSS from Qualtrics as a .sav file. In SPSS, I merged the two data. Negative items were reversely coded using the function “Recode into different variable”. I coded the new variables into different ones so I could more easily check if the items were properly reversed before using them in the upcoming processes of data analysis. Finally, dummy variables were created for the different departments as well as companies, these are used to analyse any significant differences between them. There are no respondents from R&D, marketing, or finance departments and as such these variables will be left out in further analyses.
Scale analysis and reliability
The acquired data was used to perform factor analysis and scale reliability checks for the various scales used. Factor loadings should preferably be above .50 (Hair et al. 1998), whereas the Cronbach alpha is acceptable when above .70 (Mertler & Vannatta, 2004). The independent and mediator variables are tested together with factor limit set to two to exclude any items that would load on both scales.
HSQ
Since the items that are used of the HSQ measure two dimensions, affiliative-‐ and other-‐ enhancing humour, a varimax rotation was used with the fixed number of factors set to two. Three items of the affiliative dimension (2, 4, and 7) load on both factors and are thus deleted from the scale one by one to check for
any improvement (Appendix E). After deleting the items the Cronbach alphas remain acceptable at .77 (Affiliative humour) and .84 (Other-‐enhancing humour).
GTL
All items of the scale to measure transformational leadership load above .70 and value a Cronbach alpha of .85. At this point there are no items that are deleted (Appendix E).
Positive Emotions
All items of the scale to measure positive emotions load above .70 and the scale values a Cronbach Alpha of .89. Again, at this point there are no items that are deleted (Appendix E).
GTL and Positive Emotions
To eliminate any overlap caused by these scales, a factor analysis was done with the two scales and a fixed factor loading set to two. Items for the two scales loaded on separate factors and with sufficient loadings above the threshold of .50 (Appendix E).
Dependent variables
The factor analysis for innovative work behaviour shows one item (IWB_2) that loads below the threshold of .50, which is then deleted from the scale (Appendix F). After deletion the scale still shows high internal consistency with Cronbach’s Alpha of .86 (Appendix I).
Innovative output values sufficiently above the .50 threshold for factor loadings, except for IO_3. The Cronbach alpha is .75, which makes this scale still sufficient to use as a measure for innovative output (Appendix I).
where one reversely coded item was applied. This item was reversed but had not been tested in this form in previous research;
therefore the reliability of this item and the scale in general has decreased. The reversed coded item, “I don't enjoy searching for novel approaches that are not required at the time”, has a very high standard deviation (.968), which indicates that the answers to that item were spread over a large range of values (Appendix G). This in turn indicates that the answers were inconsistent and is most likely why the Cronbach alpha is insufficient. The reverse coded item clearly was not fully understood. This could also be caused by the double negatives don’t and not, which might have been confusing. However, the feedback received after the pilot questionnaire did not include any comments on this specific item. Previous research indicates no reason to assume that the scale is unreliable (Dechesne, 2013 and Ko and Butler, 2002), therefore the scale will be included for further analysis. All of the scales Cronbach alpha’s of before and after items were deleted can be found in Appendix H.
Models
The scales can be used to make five models with all the variables (Figure 2), one where
positive emotions are an independent variable, model A, and one model where it is a dependent variable, model B. In addition, Model C, D and E were made to check for a mediating effect of positive emotions in the relation between transformational leadership and creativity and innovativeness. Since there are three scales measuring for followers’ creativity and innovativeness these will be divided in sub-‐ models. In addition, the two dimensions of humour will be placed in sub-‐models as well. Model A uses nine variables per sub-‐model and two additional variables for measuring a moderation effect of humour on the link between transformational leadership and creativity and innovativeness. Model B uses four variables for the two sub-‐models. The sample per variable exceeds the threshold of ten per variable, which is required to perform reliable regression analysis (Vittinghoff & McCulloch, 2007). The lower internal consistency of Bisociative thinking should be held into account when analysing the outcomes of the models in which it is used.
Model E
5 Results
The following section presents the results of the descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations. In addition, the results of the regression analyses will be discussed. Finally, the hypotheses will be accepted or rejected based on the results of the regression.
5.1 Descriptive statistics
In table 1 the descriptive statistics of all variables are shown. Both innovative work behaviour and innovative output have low standard deviations compared to the other variables. Innovative work behaviour and innovative output have a standard deviation of .51 and .49 with a mean of 3.55 and 3.51 respectively. This means that there is lower variation in the answers and that respondents generally valued higher on these scales.
An explanation for this finding may be that the respondents have a higher education (undergraduate or graduate) and are thus more inclined to think and act with more creativity and innovativeness. In addition, the
questionnaire was self-‐reported, which could have slightly inflated the values on these scales. The standard deviations of control variables age and tenure are both very high in comparison to other variables. QQ-‐plots and histograms signify that age might not be normally distributed. There is even more reason to believe that tenure is non-‐normally distributed looking at the plots and histograms. The Shapiro-‐Wilk test reveals that non-‐normality is insignificant for age, but is significant for tenure (Appendix I). Tenure is transformed with log and is now still significant for a non-‐normal distribution. The transformed variable LN Tenure will still be used as the outliers are considerably less and the histograms show a more normal distribution.
