DOES THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT AFFECT EMPLOYEE CRETIVITY? THE ROLE OF THE DUAL PATHWAY TO CREATIVITY
MODEL.
Master Thesis, MSc Human Resource Management
University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
Abstract
Creativity is of great importance for every organization. Yet, the physical environment and more specifically the construction of the offices, has been overseen as a salient driver for employee creativity. In the small volume of existing studies, both open and closed offices were found to be positively related to creativity; however, how is this achieved is still neglected. Two different processes (cognitive flexibility and cognitive persistence) are highlighted, that may affect employees creativity based on the type of their offices (open vs. closed). I argue that the office space configuration can be associated with employee creativity depending on either flexibility or persistence. Contrary to the hypotheses and regardless of the significant interaction mainly of flexibility and partially of persistence with creativity; results showed no significant association between the physical workspace and employee creativity. The importance of creative process engagement as a driver to creativity is also of interest and constitutes an interesting path to explore. This research presents implications and recommendations for future research that are thoroughly discussed.
Keywords:
Introduction
Nowadays the competition between organizations is vigorous and firms are constantly trying to find ways to stand out. Creativity is an essential part of every organization in order to be more innovative and antagonistic. Hence, human capital is salient to firms from the perspective of making employees more creative. Organizations increasingly invest in designing workspaces to support employees’ creativity, foster company innovation and communicate a positive company image; plus having ‘creative workspaces’ in businesses has become a trend—at least for companies that wish to be perceived as creative and innovative (De Paoli et al., 2017). A contemporary example of these organizations could be Google, Apple, and Facebook which have received considerable media attention for their unique workspaces (Meinel et al., 2017). As a result the social climate of organizations increased and the interactions between the employees bust the creativity in high levels (Samani et al., 2014). Moreover, Hoff and Oberg (2015) mentioned that it is plausible that a physical work environment should be designed to support the work tasks of creative employees; since without inspirational support, such as brainstorming rooms, the work outcome was believed to become less creative. Throughout the years, it became a trend for companies to have creative workplaces (Dale & Burrell, 2010). Research evidence on the effects of such creative workplaces, however, are inconclusive; thus, the purpose of this research is to examine if the construction of an office influences employee creativity.
In the few existing empirical studies, both open and closed offices have been positively related to creativity; plus, both privacy and interaction have been found to be important for creativity (Dul, 2018).
Research on the benefits and burdens of workplace configuration has used different streams of argumentation for its effects on creativity. Open offices encourage communication and knowledge sharing, but limit privacy and expose employees to interruptions and distractions; whilst for closed offices it’s vice versa (Cornish & Talbott, 2008). On the one hand, the generation, development and assessment of creative ideas in group settings speak directly to the fact that creativity is a social phenomenon (Paulus & Nijstad, 2003). Sharing the same room encourages interaction, collaboration and enhances the ability to exchange ideas (brainstorming). Indeed, according to Bisadi et al. (2012) working common spaces increase creativity. On the other hand, traditional (closed plant) offices provide more privacy which can empower a person with the feeling of control in order to boost reflection and thinking.
Using the dual pathway to creativity model, I argue that open and closed offices may both lead to creativity; however, through difference mechanisms. This model is assumes that there are two routes in order to boost creativity; through cognitive flexibility and cognitive persistence. Flexibility is reflected in the use of many categories and frequent switching among categories, while persistence is reflected in the generation of many ideas within a few categories, with examining categories more fully and systematically (Nijstad et al., 2010). I argue that open plan offices can enhance flexibility through exploration and interaction of a broad of categories, while closed plant offices can enhance persistence through isolated reflection and concentration (Dul, 2018). To the best of my knowledge, this is the first empirical study investigating the contradicting relations of open vs. closed offices and employee creativity, through these diverse pathways of cognitive flexibility and cognitive persistence.
employee creativity as the endogenous, and cognitive flexibility and cognitive persistence as mediating variables. By addressing this literature gap this study adds to the limited research on the effects of physical environment to employee creativity. Creativity is mostly researched from the individualist perspective; while it is clear that it is also affected by external factors, such as work habits and social-environmental variables (Amabile, 1983). Thus, creativity should be studied as a complex phenomenon that occurs at multiple levels, from individuals, interpersonal interactions, and problem-solving groups to cultures, nations, and civilizations (Simonton, 1997). In addition, I add to current research in a plethora of sciences and professions. First, on environmental psychology, where the focus is on analyzing mechanisms and effects on persons of a variety o physical characteristics (e.g., visual cues); second, on physical human factors/ergonomics, focusing on the interaction between humans and the physical environment in terms of ambient conditions and workplaces for developing guidelines for design; third, on architecture and indoor design, focusing on designing the built environment; and fourth, on facility management, human resource management, and operations management, by focusing on the management of the environment (Dul, 2018).
The paper unfolds as follows. First, I provide a brief overview of theorizing and research on the topics of physical environment, the dual pathway to creativity model and employee creativity. Also, the hypotheses of the study and a conceptual model are introduced. Then, the type of method used for this research is discussed in details. Following this, the results of the study are presented. I conclude with implications of my analysis, and recommendations for future research.
Theoretical Background
The relationship between the physical environment and creativity
(Navai & Veitch, 2003). According to Samani et al. (2014), open-plan offices have existed for many years and progressively became the main arrangement of the office design. This kind of offices can offer several managerial, economic and working conditions advantages like better communication, space saving and better environment conditions (Navai & Veitch, 2003). The closed-office environment is one in which workers can isolate themselves, in varying degrees, from interruptions. Brill et al. (2001) describe these as a private or enclosed office having “four walls to the ceiling and a door”. An essential quality of the closed office is the privacy it affords to the worker. Key elements of privacy include freedom from visual and acoustical distractions, the ability to hold private conversations, and shielding from the observation of others (Cornish & Talbott, 2008).
In literature, there are many benefits to using open-plan offices instead of closed one. First, they promote communication between the employees by increasing nearness (Samani et al., 2014). Therefore this type of an office enables employees to communicate and exchange ideas more easily; having an open environment per se was reported to have a psychosocial effect by making people feel more open and sharing (Hoff and Oberg, 2015). Second, open-plan offices are allowing employees to use a broader range of categories and switching among them, compared to closed offices, thus they are seen to have more capabilities and are highly valued in today’s industry (Samani et al., 2014).
At the same time, there are several drawbacks to open-office plans in contrast with close-plan offices. Closed offices or private offices are places that each employee has his or her own office. More enclosed offices reduce unwanted intrusions and overstimulation from the environment, therefore they allow workers to concentrate and reduce the feeling of dissatisfaction with the work environment (Cohen, 1980). Another argument in favor of traditional (closed) offices is that they can block background stimuli (noise and light), as well as interruptions from others (Elsback & Pratt, 2007). Therefore, close-plan offices help employees concentrate and allows them to put in the effort of coming up with creative ideas. However, open offices it’s difficult to control the ambient conditions such as the light and the temperature due to the fact that it is fixed in a certain level. As a result, employees tend to be more uncomfortable, distracted and negatively affected by uncontrollable noises because they cannot control these conditions (Samani et al. 2017). These kinds of noise and distraction cause a significant waste of work time and productivity. As Brennan et al. (2002), mentioned, most of the employees prefer privacy over accessibility, because of the noise and distraction in non-private workplaces. In addition, employees may feel that their communication level has decreased because open condition prevents the private and secret conversations among them and this has as a negative result on their satisfaction with work environment (Samani et al., 2014).
conditions, creativity can be encouraged in workers who are not dispositionally prone to be creative. Amabile (1996) suggested that from a contextual perspective on creativity, communication in teams or between multidisciplinary people is considered very important for creativity. Many researchers, examined the combination of various physical features and found that there is a connection with positive effects on creativity, such as when a workplace has sufficient light, furniture and space, which is better than an environment with noise, heat or cold and lack of space. Influences on employee creativity may exert by creating a favorable work environment in which creativity is supported and nurtured instead of inhibited (Zhou & George, 2003).
Taking everything into consideration, I propose that the physical environment is indeed of importance for the levels of employee creativity. As mentioned, there are competing arguments about the influence of open vs. closed plan offices and on employee creativity. Therefore, I argue that open as opposed to closed type of offices seem to encourage communication and knowledge sharing, but they are not allowing workers to have privacy and they expose them to interruptions and distractions.
H1a: Open offices (vs. closed offices) are positively related to employee creativity.
H2b: Open offices (vs. closed offices) are negatively related to employee creativity.
The dual pathway to creativity model
both. Nijstad et al. (2010) define cognitive flexibility as the ease with which people can switch to different approaches or considering different perspectives, and cognitive persistence as the sustained and focused task-directed effort.
The dual pathway model builds on and expands the theory of creativity. It suggests that in order to achieve creative insights or ideas, broad cognitive categories are needed and flexible switching among categories, approaches and sets; all through the use of remote associations (Nijstad et al., 2010). Thus, it is important to make new connections among distant ideas in an effort to think out of the box; which consists of a more holistic information processing, plus the ability to change and adapt between sets and categories (Baas et al., 2013). Moreover, flexibility leads to many original responses due to the fact that it facilitates accessibility of remote knowledge and finding new connections among ideas; hence, there is an increased generation of ideas in categories that are not habitually considered (Baas et al., 2013). People should not rely on habitual thinking and fixed task strategies, instead they should use broad focus and flexible switching between approaches to the task (Nijstad et al., 2010). The generation of novel ideas and broad thinking is a significant aspect of employees’ creativity. Individuals must think flexibly and they must break sets in order to produce uncommon and original responses (de Dreu et al., 2008). In addition, according to de Dreu et al. (2008) people with good mood are more likely to be more flexible due to the fact that they are more likely to have richer associations within existing knowledge structures. These individuals will excel either when the task is complex by using their past learning to efficiently solve a task, or when creativity and flexibility are required. Considering the above statements, I argue that flexibility, the broad use of categories and the flexible switching among them, does indeed generate original and appropriate ideas.
H2a: Flexibility is positively related to employee creativity.
using the example of a brick and its uses. Through persistence, the employees focus on an existing category by recovering knowledge about bricks from memory and adding features they come up with continuous ideas within that category. Therefore, I argue that indeed creativity can be achieved by systematic exploration and incremental search processes.
H2b: Persistence is positively related to employee creativity.
The dual pathway to creativity and the physical environment.
The core concept of this paper is to build on the dual pathway by linking it to the physical environment. The creative behavior of employees is affected by the whole work environment, which is formed by the collaboration and interaction between the social and the physical work environment (Vithayathawornwong et al., 2003). Furthermore, according to Samani et al. (2014) the creative behavior of employees is not only affected by the physical environment, but it can also be affected by their information channels, interpersonal interactions, and the availability of knowledge. In addition, open offices (all employees are in the same room) empower the exchange of ideas, knowledge sharing and communication (Samani et al., 2014). It is based on brainstorming procedures, that a person is considered to be more creative when generating concepts from different categories, in order to generate unusual insights and elaborate on them (Nijstad et al., 2010). Thus, open plan offices can be related with the flexibility pathway, where the use of broad categories and switching between them is needed. I argue that the open (as opposed to closed) plan office environment benefits are positively related with the flexibility pathway, since an open office encourages communication and knowledge sharing, which is more than helpful for the employee in order to use a broad of categories.
H3a: Open offices (vs. closed offices) are positively related to flexibility.
systematically and in-depth through sustained and focused task directed effort. Hence, an open office can be a burden to persistence and the ability to concentrate, isolate from distractions and work privately.
H3b: Open offices (vs. closed offices) are negatively related to persistence.
Following the same line of reasoning, Amabile (1996) stated that the physical work spaces which are designed to be motivating can promote the level of creativity; yet, this effect is not stronger than other aspects of the work environment, such as the social environment. Moreover, the physical environment is mediated by the social-psychological work environment in order to promote creativity (Vithayathawornwong et al., 2003). As mentioned, the dual pathway model is a social psychological model in the sense that it assumes different states may associate with creativity because the influence cognitive flexibility or cognitive persistence (Nijstad et al., 2010). According to previous statements, I proposed that flexibility is related with openness to experience and extraversion; and enables more irrelevant stimuli to enter working memory, leading to the increase of availability and diversity of the elements to work in a creativity task. Thus, flexibility is positively related with creativity by allowing employees to switch to different approaches or considering different perspective. Likewise, I argued that an open plan office is also positively related with the processes of the flexibility pathway, since it encourages communication and knowledge sharing (Nijstad et al., 2010). Hence, the indirect effect of the physical environment to creativity via the flexibility pathway is also expected to be positive. Following the same rationale, I suggested that persistence which is associated with systematic and constrained information processing; is also positively correlated with creativity by allowing employees to the systematic and in-depth exploration of a few categories or perspectives (Nijstad et al., 2010). However, I previously proposed that an open office is negatively related with persistence, because it is preventing privacy and exposes employees to distractions. Therefore, the indirect effect of the physical environment to creativity via the persistence pathway is expected to negative.
open (rather than the close) plan office environment benefits are negatively related with the persistence mechanism in order to boost creativity.
H4a: Open offices (vs. closed offices) have a positive indirect effect on employee creativity that is mediated by flexibility.
H4b: Open offices (vs. closed offices) have a negative indirect effect on employee creativity that is mediated by persistence.
Conceptual model
Methodology Participants and procedure
English. The invitation message attached, mentioned among others the fact that the participants should be working in an organization. I also provided important information about my survey, such as its length (11 minutes) and its confidentiality (anonymous). I provided my contact details (name and academic email address) at the end of the survey in order to address any potential questions.
The survey was distributed to 242 individuals, of which 156 opened it and 98 fulfilled it and submitted it. From those I removed one participant’s data from the dataset due to the fact that he/she did not provide a valid answer about gender.
Of those 97 participants, 53 were females (55%) and 44 were males (45%). Participants’ ages varied from 18 to 65 years old. Almost 70% of the participants were found to be from 26 to 35 years old, 14% were from 18 to 25 years old, and 12% from 36 to 45 years old. Hence, the sample consists mostly of young employees, mostly with job in entry or low managing level. Finally, regarding tenure, 50 participants have been working in their current position for 1 to 4 years, while 23 replied that they are in their first year on the job.
Measures
(The details of the questions for each measure can be found in appendix)
Open vs. Closed Offices. Open offices are defined as workplace environments of open-plan type, meaning that employees are able to see each other and feel as a coherent group. These are places enabling the employees to communicate and this is what will be examined. Closed offices are defined as the traditional workplace environments with every office being a different room. It will be examined how these places enable employees to concentrate away from distractions and how this might affect employee creativity. I asked employees if they work in an open or closed office; and in order to measure open as opposed to closed offices, I used a dichotomous scale, 2-point scale, ranging from “Open offices” to “Closed offices”, which are if employees work in an open or a closed office.
categories. A 5-point Likert scale was used, ranging from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree”. Example items are “I am capable of approaching problems from different perspectives'', “I adjust easily” and “I am able to think flexibly” (Nijstad & Baas, in preparation). The scale was reliable (a = .62).
Persistence is defined as the opportunity of the physical environment to isolate in order to focus on the generation of ideas from one category in order to be more creative, and it is measured with a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree”. Example items are “I don't quit a task before it is finished”, “I finish things despite obstacles in the way” and “When solving problems, I work in a very focused way” (Nijstad & Baas, in preparation). The scale was reliable (α = .75).
Creativity is the production of novel, useful ideas or products that are more or less appropriate and useful in a given situation (Amabile, 1996). The creativity of each employee can rise through many ways. The construction and the design of the offices can enhance either flexibility, either persistence in order to increase creativity. Creativity is measured using a 5-point scale ranging from “Strongly Disagree’’ to “Strongly Agree”. Example items are “I try out new ideas and approaches to problems”, “I serve as a good role model for creativity” and “I find new uses for existing methods or equipment” (Tierney et. al., 1999). The scale was highly reliable (α = .88).
better understand of the process leads to creative outcome. In order to measure creative process engagement, participants were asked to indicate on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from “Never” to “Very Frequently”. Example items are “I create new ideas for difficult issues”, “I transform innovative ideas into useful applications” and “I evaluate the utility of innovative ideas” (Zhang & Bartol, 2010).
Assumptions
In order to test my hypotheses with a mediation analysis, I first tested whether the required basic assumptions were met. There was linearity, as indicated by a visual inspection of the Scatterplot. The residuals were independent, as shown by a Durbin-Watson statistic of approximately 1.99. There was homoscedasticity, as assessed by visual inspection of a plot of studentized residuals versus unstandardized predicted values. Normality was met, as assessed by a visual inspection of the Q-Q Plot. Finally, after running the tests of Mahalanobis, Cooks and Leverages; no overall outliers were found.
Results Preliminary Analysis
Table 1 depicts the descriptive statistics and correlations. As can be seen, contrary to Hypothesis 1, the physical environment of the office was not significantly correlated with creativity (r =.09, p > .10). Unfortunately, the physical environment was also not significantly correlated with flexibility (r =.05, p > .10) and persistence (r =.00, p > .10).
The correlation between mediators is also of interest. Indeed, flexibility was positive correlated with persistence (r =.31, p < .001). Age did not correlate with creativity (r =.03, p > .10), and the same applies to gender (r =.07, p > .10) and tenure (r =.03, p > .10). However, creative process engagement (CPE) and creativity were found to be significantly correlated (r =.68, p < .001).
Table 1
Descriptive Statistics and Correlations Mean S.D. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1.Age 3,08 0,73 2.Gender 1,55 0,5 -0,07 3.Tenure 2,12 0,93 .54** 0,08 4.CPE 3,59 0,51 -0,07 0,07 -0,01 5.Office 1,3 0,46 0,11 -0,13 -0,01 0,05 6.Flexibility 4,07 0,46 -0,01 -0,10 0,10 .45** 0,05 7.Persistence 3,9 0,57 0,05 0,17 0,03 .42** 0,00 .31** 8.Creativity 3,7 0,63 0,03 -0,07 0,03 .68** 0,09 .58** .43**
Mediation Analysis
In order to test all the hypotheses (H1a, H1b, H2a, H2b, H3a, H3b, H4a, H4b) a mediation analysis was run. The details of the regression analysis are reported below in Table 2, in which a series of regression models are fitted. To begin with, in Model 1, the regression of physical environment with flexibility was found insignificant, b = .42, t(91) = 4.95, p > .10. From the covariates, CPE was found to be significant for flexibility b = .42, t(91) = 4.95, p < .001. On the other hand, age was found to be insignificant b = -.04, t(91) = -.54, p > .10, with the same to apply on gender b = -.14,
t(91) = -1.59, p > .10 and tenure b = .08, t(91) = 1.41, p > .10. Therefore, no support
was found for Hypothesis H3a “open offices (vs. closed offices) are positively related to flexibility”.
Likewise, Model 2 predicted persistence, the second mediation variable, using again physical environment. The analysis showed that the regression of physical environment with persistence was also found insignificant, b = -.02, t(91) = -.18, p > .10. Again, only CPE from the covariates was found to be significant for persistence b = .47, t(91) = 4.42, p < .001. Therefore, no support was found for Hypothesis H3b “open (vs. closed offices) are negatively related to persistence”.
Model 3 of the mediation analysis was predicting creativity with both mediators and the physical environment. First, the mediation process showed that (controlling for flexibility and persistence) the physical environment was not a significant predictor of creativity b = .05, t(89) = .50, p > .10. Secondly, it was found that (controlling for the physical environment and persistence) flexibility is significant for creativity b = .42, t(89) = 3.83, p < .001; while persistence (controlling for the physical environment and flexibility) was only found to be significant at 90% level, b = .15, t(89) = 1.70, p < .10). Hence, Hypothesis H2a “flexibility is positively related to employee creativity” is supported, whilst Hypothesis H2b “persistence is positively related to employee creativity” is partially supported. From the covariates, again only CPE was found significant b = .62, t(89) = 6.10, p < .001.
In model 4, the regression of physical environment on creativity, ignoring the mediators, was found insignificant too, b = .05, t(91) = 1.35, p > .10. Hence, taking everything into consideration Hypotheses H1a “open offices (vs. closed offices) are
Table 2
Regression Analyses
Flexibility Persistence Creativity Creativity
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Intercept 2.74 (.39)*** 1.77 (.49)*** -.80 (.50) .60 (.44) Age -.04 (.07) .09 (.09) .06 (.07) .05 (.08) Gender -.14 (.09) .17 (.11) -.10 (.09) -.14 (.10) Tenure .08 (.05) -.02 (.07) -.02 (.06) .00 (.06) CPE .42 (.08)*** .47 (.11)*** .62 (.10)*** .86 (.09)*** Office .01 (.09) -.02 (.12) .05 (.09) .05 (.10) Flexibility .42 (.11)*** Persistence .15 (.09)† R² .24*** .21*** .58*** .49*** ΔR² -.03 .37 -.09
positively related to employee creativity” and H1b “open offices (vs. closed offices) are negatively related to employee creativity” are both not supported.
Indirect effects of physical environment on creativity
Effect BootSE BootLLCI BootULCI
Total .0026 .0556 -.0986 .1201
Flexibility .0057 .0460 -.0793 .1059
Persistence -.0031 .0224 -.0565 .0390
Finally, with the level of confidence for all the confidence intervals at 95% the effect size in the case of flexibility was .006 and for persistence -.003; however, both included null value of zero between the lower and the upper bound. Therefore, no mediation was found (neither for flexibility, nor for persistence). Thus, Hypotheses H4a “open offices (vs. closed offices) have a positive indirect effect on employee creativity that is mediated by flexibility” and H4b “open offices (vs. closed offices) have a negative indirect effect on employee creativity that is mediated by persistence” are both not supported.
Discussion
significant; as well for persistence which was also partially found to be a predictor for creativity. Unfortunately, no mediation was found in the relationship between physical environment and creativity from either the flexibility or the persistence path. Finally, it is worth noticing that the impact of creative process engagement as a control variable was significant for both the mediating variables (flexibility and persistence) as also for the endogenous one (creativity).
Theoretical Implications
This research presents several theoretical implications. First, despite the fact that most of the relations were found insignificant, this does not mean that the physical environment and employee creativity are not related. This question still remains and future research is needed. Instead, the significant relationship between flexibility and creativity is aligned and adds to previous research. Nijstad et al. (2010) suggested that in order to achieve creative insights or ideas, broad cognitive categories should be used and flexible switching among categories, approaches and sets; meaning the flexibility pathway. The same applies for the relation of persistence and creativity, which was partially found to be predicting employee creativity. More importantly, the cognitive mechanisms were verified as predictors of employee creativity.
The findings of this study regarding the contribution of the physical environment (open vs. closed offices) on creativity were unexpected and contradictive to those of previous studies; that referred to the importance of the workplace environment for the creation of new ideas and the increase of the stimuli of employees (Drake, 2003). However, on a conceptual level this is the first study to combine the physical environment with a social psychological model (the dual pathway to creativity model) and employee creativity. Moreover, creative process engagement was found to be of great interest, which is another new concept this papers add to the topic.
Likewise, the findings showed that the physical environment is unrelated with flexibility and persistence too, which again is inconsistent with previous researches; e.g., Samani’s et al. (2014) who mentioned that the construction of a physical environment can empower the exchange of ideas and communication, which are related with flexibility. Yet, this is again the first time that these variables have been tested (flexibility and creativity) in combination with the physical environment.
great importance for flexibility, persistence and creativity. According to Zhang & Bartol (2010), if an individual pays little attention to a problem and chooses to minimally engage in its resolution, solutions may not be creative and useful. However, creative solutions may be generated when an individual is devoted and focused on a problem and chooses to fully engage in the creative process, meaning that he or she deeply understands and identifies the problem from various perspectives; gathers diverse, but relevant, information; and finally creates a variety of alternatives (Zhang & Bartol, 2010). As such, this research confirms some studies on the topic and contributes on the literature on flexibility, creative process engagement and creativity.
Practical implications
This study also presents practical implications. Beside the fact that the study failed to provide insights to manager about how they can use or match the physical environment with their human capital, it raises awareness about the importance of cognitive flexibility and cognitive persistence regarding creativity. In line with theory, creativity is a function of flexible thinking and taking different approaches to a task, but also of systematic search processes and hard work (Nijstad et al., 2010). Hence, this study can direct organizations and managers in order to guide employees how to be creative. This can be succeed either by promoting the flexibility pathway to employees (approaching problems from different perspectives, find it easy to take a new approach if a specific approach to a problem does not work), or by encouraging employees to use the persistence path (systematic search can arrive to original responses by focusing and examining in-depth a few categories or perspectives).
environmental scanning, data gathering, unconscious mental activity, solution generation and evaluation, and solution implementation (Shalley, 1991).
Limitations and Future Research
This study also presents several limitations. The first one concerns the measure of creativity. My goal for this study was to find a compelling amount of both managers and their employees as participants in order to examine employees’ creativity. However, due to the limited time and resources, it was difficult to gather an adequate number of managers for the sample. Thus, I used mainly employees as participants to self-report their creativity levels. Further research on the topic should use have more participants, and also it should try to contain a sample with a sufficient number of both managers and their employees
The second limitation has to do with the sample. First, the sample is small and consists of 97 participants in total. Nevertheless, even if a sample of 97 participants can be stated as statistically adequate for analysis; there could be a lack of representation for all the strata in a society known as ‘sample bias’ because I used my own network. Therefore, future research about the impact of the physical environment through flexibility and persistence on creativity should be conducted with larger samples and better representation of all the strata in society and organizations. Following the same line of reasoning for the sample, the distribution of the survey was performed with an anonymous link via Qualtrics. This is another limitation, due to the fact that I did not distribute my surveys through the respondent’s personal link. Again, this was not my first option; however, I chose this path because most of the participants wanted to avoid revealing their personal information. Moreover, I propose to future researchers to conduct interviews or to go with distribution through personal links, since this process could give to the researcher the ability to have access to the personal data of each respondent. By doing so the researcher will know who actually filled in the survey; in order to avoid this issue of sampling. All these recommendations would enable the researcher to measure the items of interest better and thus, have more reliable findings.
0.7. This sample is close to being statistically reliable. However, according to Taber (2018), it remains common practice to consider alpha reaching the somewhat arbitrary value of 0.70 as a sufficient measure of internal consistency of an instrument. The low reliability in flexibility could be due to the insufficient number of items for flexibility. To overcome these limitations in the future, a sufficient number of valid items should be used in order to measure the flexibility mechanism.
Conclusion
With the present research, I proposed the existence of two mediation relationships between the office space configuration and employee creativity, and more specifically that flexibility and persistence would mediate the relationship between the physical environment and creativity. As it turned out, I found no support for all the formulated hypotheses indicating that the physical environment is an indicator of employee creativity. As such, the question “Does the physical environment affect employee creativity, and if so how?” still remains. However, flexibility and creative process engagement were found to be significant predictors of creativity. This paper aimed at contributing to the understanding of how flexibility and persistence mediate the influence of offices on employee creativity, and may serve as a starting point for further future research on the topic.
Acknowledgements
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Appendix: Details of the Online Survey Questions Open vs. Closed office:
Open offices are defined as offices in which employees are able to see each other. Closed offices are defined as a traditional workplace environment in which every office is a different room.
1. Do you work in an open or closed office?
Flexibility:
To what extent do you agree with the following statements when seeking to accomplish an assignment or solve a problem in your job?
1. I have the self-confidence necessary to try different ways of behaving.
2. I am able to think flexibly.
3. I am capable of approaching problems from different perspectives.
4. If a specific approach to a problem does not work, I find it easy to take a new approach.
5. I adjust easily.
Persistence:
To what extent do you agree with the following statements when seeking to accomplish an assignment or solve a problem in your job?
1. If I run into a problem, I continue until I have solved it.
2. If I run into a problem, I entirely focus on it.
3. I don't quit a task before it is finished.
5. When solving problems, I work in a very focused way.
Creativity:
To what extent do you agree with the following statements about your creativity in your job?
1. I demonstrate originality in my work.
2. I take risks in terms of producing new ideas in doing job.
3. I find new uses for existing methods or equipment.
4. I solve difficult problems.
5. I try out new ideas and approaches to problems.
6. I identify opportunities for new products/processes.
7. I generate novel, but operable work-related ideas.
8. I serve as a good role model for creativity.
9. I generate ideas revolutionary to our field.
Creative Process Engagement
To what extent do you engage in the following actions when seeking to accomplish an assignment or solve a problem in your job?
1. I spend considerable time trying to understand the nature of the problem.
2. I think about the problem from multiple perspectives.
3. I decompose a difficult problem/assignment into parts to obtain greater understanding.
5. I search for information from multiple sources (e.g., personal memories, others’ experience, documentation, Internet, etc.).
6. I retain large amounts of detailed information in my area of expertise for future use.
7. I create new ideas for difficult issues.
8. I look for connections with solutions used in seeming diverse areas.
9. I generate a significant number of alternatives to the same problem before I choose the final solution.
10. I try to devise potential solutions that move away from established ways of doing things.
11. I spend considerable time shifting through information that helps to generate new ideas.
12. I make important organizational members enthusiastic for innovative ideas.
13. I transform innovative ideas into useful applications.
14. I evaluate the utility of innovative ideas.
15. I transform innovative ideas into useful applications.
16. I introduce innovative ideas into the work environment in a systematic way.
17. I evaluate the utility of innovative ideas.
Demographics:
1. What is your age range?
2. Which gender do you identify as?
3. Which country are you from?
4. In which country do you currently work?
6. Which work domain (functional area) best reflects your job?
7. In which sector do you operate?
