Robert C. Litchfield

On the Role of Goal Orientation Traits and Self-Efficacy in the Goal-Setting Process: Distinctions That Make a Difference

We conducted a field study to investigate how goal orientation traits and two variants of self-efficacy affect the goal-setting process and, in turn, performance. Participants were 255 college students enrolled in psychology or biochemistry courses at a large east-coast university in the Peoples Republic of China. Structural equation modeling analyses largely supported the argument that self-efficacy defined as a trait interacts with goal orientation traits, whereas self-efficacy defined as a state mediates the trait effects in the goal-setting process. The specific Trait × Trait interaction form was consistent with Dwecks original goal orientation theory and Brockners behavior plasticity theory.

Perspective-taking as an organizational capability

This article proposes perspective-taking as an organizational capability to facilitate the knowledge integration that is widely posited as crucial to organizational learning and innovation. Building on psychological research at the individual level, the article examines how perspective-taking might be scaled to an organizational capability that can vary in strength and character. The article discusses how individual-level antecedents can be shaped to produce perspective-taking at the organizational level, and shows how perspective-taking capability might be a useful concept for strategic management by examining how it adds to absorptive capacity and ambidexterity research.

Defining Creative Ideas Toward a More Nuanced Approach

Organizational creativity research has focused extensively on distinguishing creativity from routine, non-creative work. In this conceptual article, we examine the less considered issue of variation in the type of creative ideas. Starting from the premise that creativity occurs along a continuum that can range from incremental to radical, we propose that unpacking variation in the mix of novelty and two common conceptions of usefulness—feasibility and value—results in seven meaningfully different types of creativity. We group these types of creativity into four creative continua scaled according to novelty to provide an organizing framework for future research.

Workplace Social Self-Efficacy Concept, Measure, and Initial Validity Evidence

The authors proposed the construct of workplace social self-efficacy (WSSE) and developed an inventory to measure it. Two empirical studies were conducted to examine the psychometric properties of this new measure. In Study 1, we described the development of the WSSE inventory and explored its factor structure in a sample of 304 full-time employees. Participants in Study 2 were 137 full-time employees (who provided self-report data) and 371 coworkers of these employees (who submitted peer ratings). Results showed that the WSSE inventory had a four-factor structure (social gathering, performance in public contexts, conflict management, and seeking and offering help), high internal consistency, excellent convergent and discriminant validity, and meaningful correlation patterns with related constructs in the nomological network. Furthermore, political skill was found to mediate the relationship between WSSE and several outcome variables. In addition, the WSSE inventory was found to have some advantages over the Perceived Social Self-Efficacy scale (Smith & Betz, 2000), a general social self-efficacy measure. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Idea collections: a link between creativity and innovation

In this essay we propose that considering ideas, or more specifically idea collections, should provide an important link between creativity and innovation. Ideas sit at the nexus between creativity and innovation, the point where one research stream has traditionally ended, and the other begun. Improving our understanding of samples, or collections of ideas, should provide a point of integration. To do this however, idea collections need to be built and shaped, maintained and, ultimately, used. In this brief article we comment on activities that should aid in building and shaping collections, developing collections of ideas to be more favorable to innovation processes, and using collections to extract more than single ideas to offer a variety of potentially fertile directions for future research.