Predicting creative problem solving behaviors within teams

Abstract

<p>This study attempted to test how specific attitudes towards creativity can help us predict the extent to which team members will actually use creative behaviours inherent to Basadur' s (1996) creative problem solving process. Also, this research tested how these creative behaviours generated by individual team members contribute to overall team performance. A scale measuring 5 distinct attitudes on creativity was administered to members of 45 teams each comprised of approximately 5 first year undergraduate students. Members were also asked to evaluate each of their teammates on their use of specific creative behaviours while working on group projects. Results indicated that only one dimension of creative behaviour, <em>Focused Active Divergence in Problem Finding</em>, the first step in Basadur' s creative problem solving process, could be predicted by attitudes on creativity. Furthermore, the attitude which best predicted this type of creative behaviour was identified as <em>(Not Feeling) Too Busy for New Ideas</em>. These findings set the stage for eventual research investigating the extent to which managers can use attitudes on creativity to forecast a team's likelihood of engaging in creative activity. Our results did not show any relationship between the creative behaviours assessed in our survey and overall team performance, though we hypothesize that such a relationship is probably contingent on the type of task being performed by a team. It is likely that the task our sample was asked to accomplish did not necessitate the implementation of the full creative problem solving process. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.</p>