Markus Baer

Organizational error management culture and its impact on performance: a two-study replication

The authors argue that a high-organizational error management culture, conceptualized to include norms and common practices in organizations (e.g., communicating about errors, detecting, analyzing, and correcting errors quickly), is pivotal to the reduction of negative and the promotion of positive error consequences. Organizational error management culture was positively related to firm performance across 2 studies conducted in 2 different European countries. On the basis of quantitative and qualitative cross-sectional data from 65 Dutch organizations, Study 1 revealed that organizational error management culture was significantly correlated with both organizational goal achievement and an objective indicator of economic performance. This finding was confirmed in Study 2, using change-of-profitability data from 47 German organizations. The results suggest that organizations may want to introduce organizational error management as a way to boost firm performance.

Rewarding creativity: when does it really matter?

This study examined the possibility that the relation between extrinsic rewards (e.g., pay and recognition) and employee creativity varied as a function of two conditions: employee job complexity and employee cognitive style. Our results showed a positive relation between extrinsic rewards and creativity for employees with an adaptive cognitive style who worked on relatively simple jobs. We found a weak relation between rewards and creativity for employees with an innovative cognitive style who worked on complex jobs and a negative relation for those in the adaptive style/complex job and innovative style/simple job conditions. We discussed theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Win or Lose the Battle for Creativity: The Power and Perils of Intergroup Competition

Integrating and refining social interdependence theory and structural adaptation theory, we examined the effects of intergroup competition on the creativity of 70 four-person groups engaged in two idea generation tasks. We manipulated both group membership change (change, no change) and intergroup competition level (low, intermediate, high). Competition had the expected U-shaped relation with creativity in open (membership change) groups but failed to produce the hypothesized inverted U-shaped pattern in closed (no membership change) groups. In the latter, effects were positive for low to intermediate competition and flat for intermediate to high levels. Within-group collaboration mediated these effects.

The social network side of individual innovation A meta-analysis and path-analytic integration

The current study provides a comprehensive analysis and integration of the literature on the social network correlates of individual innovation. Reviewing the extant literature, we cluster existing network measures into five general properties—size, strength, brokerage, closure, and diversity. Using meta-analysis, we estimate the population effect sizes between these network properties and innovation. Results showed that brokerage had the strongest positive relation to innovation, followed by size, diversity, and strength. Closure, by contrast, had a weak, negative association with innovation. In addition, we offer a path-analytic integration of the literature proposing and testing the direct and indirect effects of the five properties on innovation. We suggest that network size and strength impact innovation through a web of relations with the more proximal features of brokerage, closure, and diversity. Our path-analytic integration considers the two dominant perspectives on the effects of social networks—brokerage versus closure—simultaneously allowing us to establish their relative efficacy in predicting innovation. In addition, our model highlights that network strength can have both negative and positive effects (via different direct and indirect pathways) and thus inherently involves a tradeoff. We discuss the implications of these results for future research and practice.

Creativity and the Work Context

Publisher Summary This chapter summarizes and integrates the literature that has addressed the effects of contextual conditions on employee creativity. Substantial evidence suggests that employee creativity contributes to an organizations growth, effectiveness, and survival. Given the potential significance of employee creativity for the growth and effectiveness of organizations, it is not surprising that a wealth of recent studies have examined the possibility that there are personal and contextual conditions that serve to enhance (or restrict) the creativity employees exhibit at work. Most contemporary theorists define creativity as the production of ideas concerning products, practices, services, or procedures that are novel or original and potentially useful to the organization. Ideas are considered novel if they are unique relative to other ideas currently available in the organization. Ideas are considered useful if they have the potential for direct or indirect value to the organization, in either the short- or long-term.

Get Up, Stand Up The Effects of a Non-Sedentary Workspace on Information Elaboration and Group Performance

Non-sedentary work configurations, which encourage standing rather than sitting in the course of work, are becoming increasingly prevalent in organizations. In this article, we build and test theory about how non-sedentary arrangements influence interpersonal processes in groups performing knowledge work—tasks that require groups to combine information to develop creative ideas and solve problems. We propose that a non-sedentary workspace increases group arousal, while at the same time decreasing group idea territoriality, both of which result in better information elaboration and, indirectly, better group performance. The results of an experimental study of 54 groups engaged in a creative task provide support for this dual pathway model and underscore the important role of the physical space in which a group works as a contextual input to group processes and outcomes.

Revisiting the Birth Order - Creativity Connection: The Role of Sibling Constellation

This study examined the possibility that sibling demographic differences (i.e., age and sex differences between the focal individual and his or her siblings) and sibsize (i.e., number of children in the focal individuals family) moderate the relation between an individuals birth order and his or her creativity. A total of 359 undergraduates described their family background and then were assigned to small teams to work on 8 problem-solving tasks. Each individuals contributions to the tasks were evaluated for creativity by his or her teammates. Results showed that firstborns with large sibling groups were more creative when they had relatively more siblings close in age or of the opposite sex. We discuss the implications of the results for future research on birth order and creativity.

A wandering mind does not stray far from home: the value of metacognition in distant search.

When faced with a problem, how do individuals search for potential solutions? In this article, we explore the cognitive processes that lead to local search (i.e., identifying options closest to existing solutions) and distant search (i.e., identifying options of a qualitatively different nature than existing solutions). We suggest that mind wandering is likely to lead to local search because it operates by spreading activation from initial ideas to closely associated ideas. This reduces the likelihood of accessing a qualitatively different solution. However, instead of getting lost in thought, individuals can also step back and monitor their thoughts from a detached perspective. Such mindful metacognition, we suggest, is likely to lead to distant search because it redistributes activation away from initial ideas to other, less strongly associated, ideas. This hypothesis was confirmed across two studies. Thus, getting lost in thoughts is helpful when one is on the right track and needs only a local search whereas stepping back from thoughts is helpful when one needs distant search to produce a change in perspective.

Then and Now: Job Design, Diversity and Creativity

Over the years, the management field has had many important contributors to its theoretical development and practical application of major concepts. As a relatively young academic discipline, we ha...