Creativity cognitive style, conflict, and career success for creative entrepreneurs

Creativity cognitive style refers to individual differences in perceiving, behaving, solving problems, taking decisions, and relating to others in the creative process, whereas conflict handling style depicts individuals' behavior in response to interpersonal conflicts. Leaders' conflict management has profound impacts on group outcomes, though little work has been done to examine the relationship between entrepreneurs' creativity cognitive style, conflict handling style, and career success in creative industry sectors. Structural equation modeling is used to examine the hypotheses on a sample of 251 creative entrepreneurs in Taiwan. Results indicate that creative entrepreneurs' cognitive style influences entrepreneurial success through affecting conflict handling style. Based on the theories of cognitive psychology and conflict management, this paper sheds light on the missing link between entrepreneurial cognition and conflict handling in the entrepreneurship domain. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.