Journal
ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND HUMAN DECISION PROCESSES
Volume 116, Issue 2, Pages 229-240Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2011.03.006
Keywords
Paradoxical frames; Creativity; Paradox; Conflict; Integrative complexity
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Across industries, organizations operate in increasingly complex and uncertain environments. To succeed in such environments, organizations require their members to think creatively and integrate conflicting demands. We propose that the adoption of paradoxical frames-mental templates that encourage individuals to recognize and embrace contradictions-increases creativity. In four laboratory studies using different creativity tasks and different manipulations for eliciting paradoxical frames, participants who adopted paradoxical frames were more creative than their counterparts who did not. Our results suggest that the positive influence of paradoxical frames on creativity is due to the paradoxical relationship between task elements and not merely to their joint activation. This paradoxical relationship creates a sense of conflict in individuals and enhances their ability to integrate contradictions, which in turn increases creativity. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available